Isaac Newton's Girl
by Stargazer-Dreamcatcher01
Summary: "You don't scare me, Isaac Newton." He smiled, "Oh, you scare me, Lil. You buggin' scare me." This is the story of the children of the Maze. From WICKED's choice to the Cure and their 'Ever After' through the eyes of a fiery Group B girl, who - despite her effort - falls hard for a infected Glader. Can the teens stay alive and pull back their lost memories before he loses his mind?
1. Chapter 1

_**Isaac Newton's Girl**_

**The world of Maze Runner and all the characters except Lilianne and Karly belong to **_**James Dashner.**_

**Okay, firstly – Thank you for clicking on my fanfiction, reader – I really hope you enjoy it :D**

**Warnings – Newt/OC and mentions of Newt's depression/attempted suicide in later chapters – But most of the story is pretty cheerful!**

**I always wanted to know what happened to WICKED's subjects before they went into the trials and what they were like as new recruits – and after them as well – so I made it up. I've had this story in my head pretty much since I finished the first book and am still working on most of the chapters. I would love to hear what you think! **

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**Chapter 1**** –** _**The Beginning of the Beginning. - 14 years old**_

"SWEETHEART!" Mom's shout pierced my safe duvet-cocoon world, ringing through the house and summoning me into a reluctant 8 AM reality, "Get up, honey! There's someone here to talk to you!"

8 AM – June 28th. When I woke up that morning, I'd expected it to be just like any other day: Breakfast, studying, painting, lunch, reading, bath, bed – and a million other ways to endure the ridiculous rule of constant house arrest. (Mom wouldn't let me out then – the Flare had terrified all the 'posh lot' into hiding) If I was lucky, my cousin Ruby might come round for ten minutes before Mom shooed her out and sterilized everything she'd touched. Even since Uncle Dan went crazy, she'd become obsessive about me and hygiene - that always seemed like shutting the door after the horse had bolted, but I couldn't blame her. She was afraid. We all were. But, anyway, when I woke up that morning, I had no idea that one day and the people waiting in it would turn my life, completely, madly and – in _his_ case – unbelievably upside down.

Opening my eyes blearily, I dragged myself from my cocoon and into the huge window seat that my Dad had built when I was six. It was my favourite escape place – shaped like a crescent moon - and I had sat in it for so long over the eight years that the pink velvet of the seat was tattered and shiny in the centre. I stood up on the seat, hooking my fingers into the grooves I'd worn in the window-frame and looked out across the city – not that you could really call it that anymore. The Flare had pushed almost everyone in this part of town into their homes and those who did go out wore masks across their faces and took huge detours to avoid passing within three metres of another human being, practically running to the next building in the street. _Like that's going to do anything, _I thought._ It's an inevitable_. I'd decided that human beings in general react badly to inevitables. They see them, know in the backs of their heads what they are, but instead of enjoying the time they have before inevitability descends, they run around desperately trying to stop it and end up wasting all their time with fear and struggling. And the people here were no different. Of course, there are always that gang of boys who play at being 'rebels', kicking a football around the concrete and yelling at the people in the houses. I could see them from my windowsill, aiming shots at each other's heads and lighting up cigarettes they'd bartered off some other idiot who wanted to blacken his lungs. One of them met my eyes from three floors down and made some comment that I couldn't hear to his friends. The loudest one, Josh Forster-Jones (bane of his mother's life), shouted up to the window:

"You ogling us again Grasshopper Girl?! Come down – we've got Marlboro Lights!"

I winced at the nickname and dragged my fingers through my hair to flatten it before levering open the huge glass pane and leaning out.

"In your dreams FJ! I hope you choke on them!" I yelled with a grin – his mom was friends with my mom. We practically grew up in the same stroller – I wasn't afraid of him. But before he could reply, I heard a panicked gasp and Mom screeched up the stairs,

"DARLING! CLOSE THAT WINDOW NOW! IT'S AIRBORNE! COME DOWN!" I sighed and slammed it shut. _We're three floors up! _I thought irritably but ignored this and called "Sorry Mom! Coming!"

I grabbed my Zara jeans, a vest top and my Converse boots, pulled them on and grabbed a hairbrush off the dresser and looked at myself. My chestnut-coloured hair was sticking up on both sides of my head, prompting Josh's taunt. Grasshopper was a name Dad had always called me after I found one by the banks of the lake and became obsessed with the things. For the whole summer, everything I wore was green and yellow – at least until school started and I became a laughing-stock, so I dropped it. Unfortunately the name stuck. I fixed my hair, washed, and then ran down the three creaky flights to the kitchen before skidding to an abrupt halt at the sight.

Mom was there as usual with a strained smile on her worn face, but standing next to her was a tall man wearing a black suit and a serious expression. He held a black briefcase in one hand with the letters W.I.C.K.E.D stamped across it in red letters edges in gold. For a second I was confused but then I laughed – it was only a week after my birthday – could this be some crazy sing-a-gram? No-one who actually wanted to be taken seriously would call their company WICKED, stamp it across a briefcase and edge it in red – he seemed more like some kind of a clown! But then the clown caught me staring and gave me a tight-lipped smile that didn't reach his eyes - which didn't really fit my theory - before nodding to Mom, who suddenly jerked into action.

"Honey, this is Mr Black from the World In Catastrophe: Killzone Experiment Department." She smiled at me too, almost as if she was trying to reassure me. Okay, not a sing-a gram then. And a Killzone Department – what? Why didn't I feel reassured?

"He's here to talk to us about… you." Briefcase man nodded (again) and gestured towards the antique chairs in the corner of the room.

"Sit down please. I need you to take this very seriously." When I had established that this wasn't a prank, and this was our first out-of-town visitor for a year I'd become more than a little freaked out – so I was somewhat relieved that the guy could do something other than nod. I did so silently, pulling a cushion onto my lap and looked at Mr Black. _Why is he looking at me like my life depends on it? _He met my eyes and spread his hands wide.

"Look, I'm not going to beat around the bush here – there isn't an easy way to say this. You know about the Flare I assume. I hope so or perhaps you are not as intelligent as I was led to believe." I nodded, slightly offended. Who didn't know about the disease that was destroying the world as we know it? I hadn't seen it though. Not properly. Mom had kept me about as far away from Uncle Dan as was humanly possible – and he was on the Bliss anyway. But the laughter I'd heard still haunted my dreams.

"The fact is, it's stealing the identities of thousands every single day. Every attempt at quarantine or containment is failing. No matter what we build it always gets past it. The only treatment available is the Bliss, which is exceedingly costly to produce and does nothing to cure the disease."

"I know." I told him. Everybody knew. _But other than to tell me that I'll die horribly, why's he talking to me?_

"Good. But here's the thing, kid. We need a cure or the whole human race will die. But we have nothing to base it on. Cranks themselves are too volatile – the Flare Effect varies too much for any result to be useful. However, we have realised that a small group of people – mainly under twenty – have a certain quality that could benefit our research and help us find a cure. People like this – like you- seem to find it much harder to contract the Flare. Usually, it seems to be people with a high intelligence level – though not always."

Wait, what? There was a way to try and prevent this? Why was this WICKED hiding it? My thoughts flickered to Uncle Dan, my Gran, the girl that Ruby would eventually be.

"Why not tell everyone? People are _dying_! You _need_ to tell them!" Mom raised her hand at my outburst but Mr Black just looked sad and said:

"If only we could. But we cannot work out what makes you kids the way you are. That's why we need your help. You will be placed into training for a number of – harmless – tests to try and study your mental patterns. With WICKED, I assure you, you are safe. However, there are those on the outside that hate your kind. Therefore you must leave your home behind, assume a new identity and come with us."

I stared at him wordlessly, trying to take it in. Was he mad? He expects me to leave my Mom her _alone_ and follow him into some crackpot experiment like a rabbit in a shampoo lab? And then has the nerve to tell me it's for my own good? Was Mom actually _buying_ this? I placed the cushion back onto the arm of the chair and met his steel grey eyes.

"Thank you Mr Black, but I can't do that. My Mother needs me here - she hasn't got anyone else. My Dad disappeared four years ago. I'm sorry for wasting your time."

I watched Mom share a guilty look with Mr Black and cast her eyes to the floor, avoiding my gaze.

"It's a non-negotiable situation, kid. Your mother already signed you over. You belong to the organization now. Your suitcase is by the door, packed." Okay this had to be a joke. It _had_ to be – or maybe I'm still asleep – whatever twisted life reality had become in the last decade, it couldn't be this! I felt like I'd been punched in the gut. The edges of my vision clouded and the room seemed to rock slightly with the betrayal. Signed me over. An object to be bought and sold. I cast a desperate, accusing look at Mom but then the man was holding out my leather coat and was speaking again, pushing a small piece of white plastic about the size of a credit card across the table.

"This is your identification. Under _no_ _circumstances_ let yourself be caught without it."

I picked it up off the table before looking at it in confusion:

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NAME: Lilianne Pasteur

D.O.B: 03/11/000 (AGE: 14)

GENDER: Female

SUBJECT: B5

PROPERTY OF WICKED

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Other than the obvious stuff – my age and gender – I didn't recognise anything on that card.

"Lilianne Pasteur?" I asked. "But that's not my name." Mr Black rolled his eyes.

"They said you were intelligent. You must leave your identity behind or you will find yourself a target for Cranks. The faster you accept your name the easier it will be. And we must leave now Miss Pasteur."

I'm going to tell you now – I'm not a violent person. In a fight, rather than actually being in it, I'm more likely to be the one on the edge screaming "OH MY GOSH, STOP! STOP!" But in that second the last half hour, Mom's guilty glances, the lying card, Black's patronising pity, built up in a huge wave and crashed over my head and something snapped. I spun on my heel, dodging past Mom before she could react and bolting for the stairs, pulling the fruit basket off the nearby table in my wake and yelling over my shoulder:

"I'M NOBODY'S PROPERTY!"

The tears that blinded me as I stumbled back up the three flights surprised me – I didn't cry. Never. I'd spent the last three years of my life wishing and wishing I could be free, that someone would take me away to have an adventure, like the people in my stories – so why the heck was I _crying? _Why did I _care? _Angry with myself, Mr Black, my Mom and probably the whole world in general, I flung myself into my window seat, climbing up to the highest section of it and perching there, determined to show the emptiness of the room that, however uncomfortable it was, I _could_ sit there. For a while, I had a complete moment of weakness and curled up in a ball, crying that sort of crying that doesn't make a whole lot of sense – the way you do without knowing what else to do- crying that's fiercer than any tears with actual reason. But then something fluttered on the edge of my vision and I looked up. A piece of paper was caught in the corner of my window and when I pulled myself to it to look more closely, I saw that it was a prescription. A Bliss prescription to be precise, the thousand dollar figure still visible on the label. The things Mr Black had said suddenly slid into my mind:

"_We need your help… thousands of lives… find a cure… no-one else" _

I looked back to the prescription. It was a local one. _Whose is that_? I wondered, _Who else was trying to dodge death?_ I probably knew them. My area wasn't all that big – probably someone who'd come to all the school events, been to all the dances and balls, the charity actions, who'd put in five dollars to buy me a present when my Dad left – someone who'd have their life stolen. Could I stop that? Not alone. I couldn't play a lead role. But how could I ever look out of my window again without seeing the paper? How could I turn on the T.V without hearing the laughter or close my eyes without seeing their scarred faces – knowing that I had a chance to help and I refused? And why had I? Because I was frightened. But I bet I wasn't half as frightened as the owner of that slip.

Slowly, I opened the window and unhooked the sheet with my fingertips and stuffed it into my pocket, before clambering down from the seat and walking to my door. I looked back and took in the bright colours and the thousands of memories that filled the room, good and bad – it almost crippled me for a second, but I'd made my decision. And though I had no suspicion of what my future would be, I knew in my heart I'd never come back.

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I stepped back in, taking the offered coat in a daze, trying hard to mask the devastation on my face with some of the determination I'd felt upstairs. Keeping my chin up, I moved towards my Mom to hug her. She held out her arms to me but the man grabbed my shoulder.

"No goodbyes. It makes it so much harder to leave. Besides, we have been here far too long already. It will not be long until someone gets a grip on our location – and I have a very tight schedule."

I forced back the furious tears choking my throat. "What happens then? If you get found?"

"Believe me kid, you've got to hope you never find out." Black pulled open our front door and a gust of air rushed in, immediately causing a flicker of panic to cross Mom's face and she grabbed the nearest towel and pressed it across her mouth. My eyes flickered to the clock on the wall -9 AM- how had everything gone so wrong in one lousy hour? What kind of sick dream was this?

"Come _on_, Lilianne."

At the sound of the ridiculous, alien name, I ripped my shoulder out of his grip and threw myself into Mom's arms, holding her tightly. She hugged me back and I could see the tears sparkling in her tawny-gold eyes.

"Why?" I whispered. For the first time that morning, she looked me in the eyes.

"I love you, darling. I always will. Your Dad loved you too, I know he did. But I'm not alright. I haven't been for a long time – I watched my brother disappear. If you stay here, you're not safe – I can't let you watch what I have, can't let you watch _me_. They can keep you safe, honey – I can't." Her voice broke and she touched her forehead to mine. "I love you."

I didn't know what to say. There was nothing _to_ say. Mr Black suddenly cleared his throat and sighed, tapping his watch.

"Schedule, ladies…" At that moment, any question vanished and I hated him.

"I love you too Mom" I whispered as I spun on my heel, grabbing my suitcase and walked out of my door ahead of Black - out of the world of security I'd built around myself and into a great unknown…

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**Whoo – I finally got the chapter up! My best friend has bugged me to finish it for months! **** Okay – I know there were no Canon characters in that chapter! There will be some soon - chapter Three really when Lily runs into the **_**original**_** Ivy Trio with little nine – year – old Winston **** So, what do you all think of her? R+R! **

**Star ** x**


	2. Chapter 2 - The Train

_**I do not own TMR - The world/characters/central plot of Maze Runner belongs to James Dashner!**_

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_**Chapter 2 – The Train – 10:55 AM**_

"This is it," After a long journey in a shiny Jaguar, made longer by my stony silence and Black's vain attempts to engage me in conversation, we stepped out onto what had once been a bustling train platform. I could still see scraps of ancient posters clinging stubbornly onto billboards and old tickets stubs wedged into cracks in the weakening floorboards.

"It's significantly worse for wear, Miss Pasteur, but will serve its purpose. The train arrives in –"

Mr Black checked the expensive Rolex strapped to his thin wrist.

"Precisely five minutes."

"What train?"

"The one with the other subjects in, of course."

He gave me a withering look, like: _Why did I get saddled with this one? _ Other subjects?I ignored his tone and found myself wondering about these other people, signed away by their families to be tested like lab rats. Did they know anything? Could I trust them? I'm gonna say this now – I'm not good with people. Seven years of protectiveness has made me sort of an introvert and being stuck on a train with a hundred other "highly-intelligent" people could possibly be my worst nightmare.

There were several minutes of awkward silence with only the occasional chirp of a bird or the creak of the overhead lines to break it. I turned the unfamiliar white card over in my hands, contemplating how much pressure I'd have to apply to snap the thing in half.

In the end Mr Black was right though. At exactly 11 o'clock, a squealing noise was heard and my new future began to creak towards us in the form of a battered metallic-grey monster. Yep- that sounds about my luck. We got up from the cheese-grater chairs we'd sat in and stepped towards it as it ground to a stop in front of us. I could already hear the deafening noise of people through the rusted door and felt a flicker of panic rip through my chest. _This is it, _I thought, _don't mess it up._

As the doors creaked open, Mr Black placed a hand on my shoulder and said with a concerned expression:

"Be careful Miss Pasteur. You are one of the wealthier subjects. Some of them are not quite as… uh… eloquent as you are." Great. Reassuring. But then what seemed to be becoming just about typical.

I nodded, acknowledging the warning and reached up, grabbing the yellow bar on the inside of the train and swinging myself in, hearing the train groan in protest under my feet. Mr Black raised his hand in farewell but I ignored him and pushed the heavy doors closed. I decided this was better than the two fingers and showing him just how _eloquent_ I could be.

In front of me was a large door with a small window and 'Company C' on a wooden plaque. At least, that's what I think it said. It actually read 'C m p ny C' in cracked black varnish. I could hear someone yelling inside – or maybe several people- I wasn't sure, someone reasonably young was emitting a high-pitched wailing noise that no-one was really doing anything about. It was that noise that gave me the courage, I think. That kid sounded like I felt. I took a deep breath along with the train, wheezing as it rattled forwards and I pushed open the door.

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_**3 more sleeps to go! **_

_**Thank you to softball007, theevilsquiddancer, Datgirl45, Guest for your fabulous reviews and to FireOfInspiraton, TweetyGhost, , Daiseymaemari-25, wolfmoon10 for follows/favourites – I love you all! – You have no idea how happy you made me!**_

_**I just realised that ch 1 was the mother of long chapters and ch2 was super short - Chapter 3 is coming up tomorrow! (Here come the canon characters!**__** \- are you excited?)**_

_**Star * xx**_


	3. Chapter 3 - Backstreet Boy

_**I do not own TMR - The world/characters/central plot of Maze Runner belongs to James Dashner!**_

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_**Chapter 3 – Backstreet Boy**_

In the end, my angst wasn't really worth it. A couple of people glanced in my direction, but the majority carried on with whatever randomness they'd busied themselves with. I say randomness – chaos is probably a better word.

An Asian boy, about my age, was hanging upside down from a ceiling rail that was creaking ominously whilst a blonde girl with dip-dyed hair was yelling at him to get off '_before you bring the freaking roof down and kill us all!'. _Some others were playing a noisy game of Snap in the corner, screeching at the tops of their voices, a shady-looking figure was scratching nasty graffiti on the windows that would have made Mom's eyes burn. Honestly, for a small carriage, there were people in pretty much every position imaginable – sprawled on the floor, sitting, hanging, standing, sleeping, screaming – you name it, there was somebody doing it.

For a long second, I just stared into the carriage looking at the mayhem but a sudden choked wail startled me out of my trance. My eyes swivelled to one corner of the battered tin can that housed a long, splintering bench with four pierced teenagers lounging on it. One of them glared at a small, shivering bundle on the end of the bench before aiming a plastic bottle at it.

"God, kid – shut the hell up before I come over there and shut your trap myself!"

The plastic bottle found its target and the kid in the blankets squealed, the wailing dying down to a muffled sniffling. A flare of irritation flashed through me as I looked at the grimy older boy – yeah, as far as I could tell, this sucked, but we were all in the same sucky boat – taking it out on a sobbing child was low.

"Leave him alone!" I demanded, "What's he done to you?"

The boy looked up, eyebrows raised, evidently surprised that I'd dared to question him. He leered at me, brushing his greasy hair from his forehead, his eyes sweeping me up and down, and I took a step backwards warily.

"What's he done?! He's driving nails into our skulls and taking up a mile of space too –Why should I, Rich Girl?"

The boy stood up then, towering over me, his day-old breath making my head spin and I suddenly lost all ability to speak.

"Because…because..." I stammered, searching my mind for a scathing comeback, "Because it's not very nice, is it?"

_Wow Lilianne. Just __wow__. _I should be a politician. The jerk and his cronies immediately started cackling and flipping me off – "_Daddy couldn't buy you an IQ, sugar?" _ I was shrinking down next to the bundle in the corner, wishing I could sink into the floor, when a voice called:

"For God's sake, give it a freaking rest, Sam!" It was the blonde girl who'd been screaming before. She strutted across the carriage in her miniskirt, her spike-heeled boots clacking on the wooden beams as she went. "We all know you have the biggest ego in the room, sweetie – leave it out". She tossed her thick hair across her shoulder as she spoke, raising an eyebrow. Sam smirked up at her now, changing his tune:

"Sure thing, gorgeous…" The girl wrinkled her nose and threw herself down onto the bench next to me.

"You okay?" She grinned, "Sorry about that – He's an idiot." I snorted and nodded weakly.

"Yeah – thanks."

"No problem! I'm Karly, by the way – Karly Linnaeus. That idiot over there's Minho - he's the son of a martial arts medallist from Korea."

Karly pointed across at the Asian boy she'd been yelling at before, who – on hearing his name – heaved himself into a vertical position and waved. Looking at him, I could believe it - the guy was built like an oak tree and in his current situation, I could see the veins popping in his muscled arms. I didn't realise I was staring until Karly elbowed me in the ribs with a questioning face:

"Aaaand you are?"

"Oh! Sorry - Lilianne Pasteur."

Karly screwed her eyes up, "Yeesh. And I thought Linnaeus was bad..."

I drew back then, confused and a little offended. What was wrong with my name? Okay, it definitely wasn't much – it sounded more like one of those fancy liqueur chocolates that looks pretty but nobody actually likes, than a name – but it was all I had. What right did this high-school prom queen have to sneer at it? I was getting ready to make a snarky comment that was about as impressive as my remark to Sam when Karly noticed the look on my face and hastily raised her hands:

"Whoa, whoa – no offense! I thought they'd told you the whole thing with the names!"

There was a pattern to our names? That would make sense – the few I'd heard so far sounded pretty insane. Karly was hurrying to explain it, gesturing at the other carriage hostages, rattling off their names at a million miles an hour – and I was absolutely certain that I would remember none of them afterwards. Her first gesture was at a small, willowy girl with perfect coffee-coloured skin and flowing black hair.

"That's Mariella Curie, she's from Lisbon, got on the train two weeks ago – talks about her hair, her make-up and her boyfriend constantly – disgrace to her namesake, don't waste your time." I nodded, hoping that was the right response. Next was a taller, African looking girl with dark-brown hair and a skinny looking redhead with milk white skin.

"Harriet Beecher-Stowe and Sonya Sarandon: They're okay, quite smart and a hundred times better than Mariella. Dmitri Mendeleev, Russian – seems alright but speaks absolutely no English, so no-one really has a clue about the guy (could be a mass murderer for all we know). Benjamin Franklin…"

Karly carried on with the list but I'd stopped listening, turning the names over in my head. They were all familiar to me – Marie Curie discovered radioactivity, Dmitri Mendeleev was the Periodic table, Harriet Beecher-Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, Carl Linnaeus… I think that was something to do with animals and then…

"And then there's you!" Karly paused for breath, "Louis Pasteur – wasn't he that milk guy?"

"Pasteurization." I said, feeling a sudden need to protect my namesake. There was _no way_ I was going to be known as 'the milk girl' for the next decade. She nodded,

"Okay. So we're basically all famous people, which is why it sucks! I mean, _come on, _I could have been Rihanna or Oprah, or at least someone interesting – Joan of Arc or Cleopatra or something. _But no_."

Karly threw herself back against the rusted wall of the train, the hollow creaking sound disappearing into the general clamour of the carriage, and throwing her hand across her forehead dramatically. "I get to be the guy who invented _the organism classification system._"

Looking at this girl, collapsed across a window ledge, my exhausted brain started to summarize every depressing thing I'd been told that day. _New_ _identity, brain patterns, harmless tests, killzone department, 'you better hope you never find out', containment failure – _and her theatrical display over a celebrity namesake suddenly seemed so ridiculousthat I started to laugh – and not the attractive giggling you see on TV either; full on laughter than doesn't have a specific sound but is made up completely of snorting, squeaking and high-pitched noises. Karly removed her hand from her face in surprise and mock irritation, but took one look at me and promptly joined in.

By the time we'd stopped laughing over nothing and had pulled ourselves together, the 50% of the room that wasn't passed out was staring at us like we were full-gone Cranks. (At the time I didn't realise how normal that was going to become) But I'd passed the point of caring now, so just met their eyes and grinned at them Cheshire cat style and sang "Sorry!"

Karly picked my hand up off the seat and swung it back and forth, stating "We're gonna be friends."

And though she was never the kind of friend I'd imagined when I was alone in my room, or even the kind of friend I'd have picked when I stepped into W.I.C.K.E.D's world for the first time, she was right.

* * *

In the next hour, as the clouds drew together across the sky and the rain began to batter the carriage - the noise sounding like gunfire inside the metal room- , I learned. I'd be more specific but that's really what it was. Mostly I learned useless trivia about the other people on the train (Minho's greatest weakness is avocado, Karly can quote every Keira Knightley film there has ever been, Mariella's boyfriend is called Archibaldo, Harriet won fifteen under 12 marathons before the sun flares hit and Dmitri loves kittens - we think) but also, we pooled our knowledge about W.I.C.K.E.D and what was happening. Unfortunately, it didn't take much pooling to work out that we knew absolutely nothing, but I think it made everybody feel better to come up with bizarre theories about our possible destination and our future. The reality, of course, was beyond our wildest nightmares, but in that freezing train with a storm starting up outside, it was much more entertaining to spout rubbish like 'world domination', 'cloning' and 'advanced chicken racing' than anything that was actually possible.

So, when the door flew open with an almighty crash and two teenage boys were flung roughly in, it's fair to say that everyone jumped a foot in the air.

"Oh my God!" Karly yelled, pulling on my arm as a man in a white suit walked in behind the boys, a disapproving expression on his face. W.I.C.K.E.D was painted across the jacket in large red letters. The boys were still on the floor, trying to disentangle their limbs when the man started to lecture them in the most patronising voice imaginable.

"Boys, boys, boys." This was accompanied by a disappointed shake of the head. "You are supposed to be intelligent young men –how many times must I tell you? STAY IN YOUR DESIGNATED CARRIAGE UNTIL WE REACH OUR DESTINATION. There are small children and elderly citizens in the other parts of the train and your attire, manner and language greatly unsettles them. There _are _solitary compartments that could be arranged for the next six hours if you cannot follow the rules…"

The man let the threat tail off. The older boy, a dark-skinned teen with close cropped hair, mumbled something that might have been an apology, hanging his head and placing what was supposed to be a restraining hand on the other boy's arm. The younger one was tall, taller than his friend but far skinner, his legs too long for his body. He shook off the hand irritably and stood up, brushing his dark blond hair out of his eyes. _Does he want to spend the rest of the trip solitary? _I thought, _I'd go insane…_

"Follow the rules?" The boy hissed, his eyes narrowed, "All we've been doin' for the past three weeks is followin' your bloody rules! Locked up in this buggin' tin can for _three weeks_ with nothing to do but bang our heads together! There's a kid over there –" He gestured towards the bundle in the corner, his voice getting louder. "Who's been cryin' his little head off since Paris – if that isn't 'greatly unsettled' I don't know what bloody is! You said you wanted us to help you – you never mentioned turning us into buggin' Cranks in the process! I'm tellin' ya', I'm going barmy – we all are!"

It was obvious that this kid was throwing every nasty word he had in his worn-out brain at the man, but the employee just took it silently, arms folded, waiting for the boy to finish. He reached out his hands, placing them firmly on the blond's shoulders, locking eyes with him. _Very passive aggressive_.

"There are only six more hours to go – you have been a model subject so far – keep going. As for Master Churchill – he is adjusting; rest assured his distress will pass. Now, unless you _want _to spend the journey alone, follow Mr Einstein's example."

There was something else in the man's voice, not just threat but knowledge. He knew that confinement would silence the boy – and whatever he knew, he was right. The kid's eyes were smouldering and his fists were clenched, but he turned his back on the employee and threw himself onto the wooden floor. The man smiled to himself, evidently considering this a victory, and left, closing the door with a bang – one final insult.

"Good riddance." The dark skinned boy, punched his friend lightly on the shoulder and muttered something very uncomplimentary about the man that I am not about to repeat.

Listening to the two boys suddenly made my think of my Mom and what her face would look like if she could hear them. Any one of the words they were tossing around would have given her a 'fit of the vapours' and had her scrubbing my mouth out with carbolic soap! The thought made me laugh quietly as I pictured her cupping her hands over my ears, "_Close your ears darling, there are__ youths __present." _The way she'd say it, as if the very idea of swearing 'youths' appalled her.

But the blond boy looked up then, his face still flushed (with embarrassment or anger, I couldn't tell) catching the smile as it faded from my lips. He scowled, giving me a filthy glare- the resentment painted clearly on his face, curled his lip and spat:

"Well we can't all talk like the bloody Queen, Princess!"

* * *

**Hi everyone! Thank you so much for your amazing reviews – they keep me going! **

**I'm really sorry it's a day late – I'm quite laid-back in real life, but when I'm writing I'm a total perfectionist, and I just didn't think it was ready **

**Merry Christmas for tomorrow everyone! Have a fabulous day!**

**Star ***


	4. Chapter 4 - Lily

_**I do not own TMR - The world/characters/central plot of Maze Runner belongs to James Dashner!**_

* * *

_**Chapter 4 - Lily**_

"Well we can't all talk like the bloody Queen, Princess!"

_Well then._ Looking back at the situation, the guy had obviously had a pretty rough day (actually, scrap that – a pretty rough fortnight), and he thought I was sneering at his accent - which he'd probably already got some abuse for. So, his response was pretty understandable, but after the day _I'd _had, I was tired, confused and generally all-round grouchy; so the boy didn't exactly receive my friendliest reaction. Black, Sam, W.I.C.K.E.D and FJ had used up all of the friendliness I usually reserved for jerks. I met his eyes, amber for brown.

"Clearly" I retorted coldly, in my mother's uptown accent – about as far from his backstreet drawl as I could get – and turned back to Karly, about to accept that I'd made a dangerous-looking enemy within _two hours_ of being on the train, when the boy's face suddenly changed. He shook his head sharply, as if trying to get rid of something and pushed himself up from the slatted floor, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands and began to walk towards us, a sheepish look on his face. Just in case I hadn't noticed the change in the situation, Karly elbowed me hard in the ribs and waggled her eyebrows, giving the boy her 'hard stare' (something that quickly became a signature move) obviously unimpressed, as he paused, rearranging his limbs to sit in front of us.

"Hiya" He said, running a hand through his hair with an apologetic – and sort of disgusted - expression. "I'm sorry, that was rude. Really _gittish_ – oh, bloody hell, this is embarrassing," The boy looked back to the spot he'd sat in, screwing his face up, and even with his new-found goodwill, he seemed hilariously flustered: "I don't even know what that buggin' _was_ – Twenty one days in a midget train with a bunch of whingin' teens, these total prats they call employees and the poor sap in the corner's makin' me bloody schizophrenic."

He said the last part with his brown eyes wide and his hands in front of him, as if he was warning me off the madness I'd stepped into, before pointing at his older friend, who had stood up and was talking to Minho (now happily back in an upside-down position).

"If anyone's gonna be a lovin' pessimist, it's him, not me – I'm tellin' ya, you give the guy a unicorn, he'd tell ya' it was a rhino…." Rolling his eyes, he stopped for breath and seemed to peter off a bit:

"…Aaand I'm gonna shut it now and let ya' speak 'cause I'm rambling and I do that when I don't know what to say and I want ya' to believe me and it's always bloody stupid – So, I-I didn't mean that –I-I'm really sorry…" He looked up at me through his matted fair hair, the sheepish smile still on his face, as he waited for me to answer him.

Honestly, I was panicking a bit too – the boy had given me so much information in his strange, thick accent, so quickly that I was still translating the last half of it a full 30 seconds after he'd finished – I didn't have the slightest clue what to tell him. Karly was (luckily) seated too far to my right for him to see her, but was shaking her head, making crossing motions across her throat and mouthing '_NO. __**NO." **_But I'd already decided that I didn't want enemies (particularly not any as big as this guy's friends) and I hadn't exactly been nice enough to deserve his winning apology, so I ignored Karly and stammered,

"No, no – I-It's okay, it's okay, it's fine – I _wasn't_ laughing at you – but it's okay, I wasn't friendly either – so, we're even, I guess – it's cool."

'_**It's cool'**__? What?! Since when do I __**ever**__ use that? Since when does __**anyone **__ever __use that? _ Karly sighed noisily and threw her head into her hands, but the boy visibly relaxed and immediately broke into a blinding, if slightly crooked, megawatt grin – he was obviously back on home ground. He looked like this was the kind of smile he gave to people all the time – the kind of person who smiles at old people and babies and children and everything else that breathes. _A people person. _He was so busy blinding us that he didn't seem to notice my grimace at myself and I was about to say something 'eloquent' to make up for it, but he was talking again:

"Thanks – that's brilliant!" Choosing to upgrade from the freezing floor, he pulled himself up into the hostile space on the bench between me and the punks. "I'm Newt, by the way."

"Newt? What kind of a name is '_Newt'_?" Karly was determined not to like the guy, her nose wrinkled with the question, almost sneering. He looked across at her, either choosing to ignore her scathing tone or honestly not noticing it, and answered reluctantly, screwing his own face up as he did:

"Ugh! Well, actually–" Newt jerked a thumb back towards the door of the compartment, his voice mocking, "_They_ told me it's 'Isaac Newton'but - no bloody way. What chance does a London street kid have of livin' up to the guy who discovered buggin' _gravity_? I mean, I came here to be an actually worthwhile version of myself, not a pathetic echo of somebody else. He can keep his stupid name – I don't want it. Plus, it's not like I'm really _breakin'_ their rule. Just…bending it."

"So we've got ourselves a badass?" Okay, I was wrong. I'd forgotten how impressed Karly was by 'bad boys'. Anyone who broke the rules was instantly super-cute, regardless of what the person actually looked like – all negatives instantly vanished. She smiled at him, but Newt suddenly looked awkward and – giving a short laugh - immediately turned the conversation away from himself.

"Not exactly… Yeah, so I'm Newt - Call me Isaac at ya' own bloody risk – and that buggin' ray of sunshine over there's Alby – talk to him_ full stop_ at ya' own risk."

Hearing his name (and Newt's teasing comment) the dark-skinned boy spun round and began to stride across the carriage towards us. Alby was pretty much the polar opposite of Newt; he was a little shorter but muscular and sturdy, his strength clear in every step he took. I glanced at the door, surprised he hadn't left a dent in the floorboards when the W.I.C.K.E.D worker threw him in - it looked like you could drive a double-decker bus into the guy and he wouldn't even flinch. Where Newt had ambled over; his gait making it seem like he had all day to get there, Alby really did _stride_ – walking with a purpose that would have been intimidating had it not been for the playful glint in his eyes. When he reached us, he swatted Newt across the back of the head with a smirk, making the boy slip off the bench with a surprised yelp, before grinning at us.

"Alby Einstein." His voice was deeper than I'd expected - he held his hand out and we shook it in turn, "Welcome to hell! I'm surprised this one hasn't yapped your ears off yet – 'S been a fortnight and I haven't said jack so far, it's so hard to get a word in"

Newt made an injured noise from the floor, dragging himself slowly back up next to me and shooting Alby an aggrieved look.

"Oww - I think you broke my tailbone…" He grumbled, before flashing him a more pained version of his usual smile, "But ya' love me really!"

"Yeah, sure." Alby answered, rolling his eyes. "So, when'd you pair get on? Never noticed ya' before."

Karly huffed and tossed her hair, obviously taking that as some kind of personal insult. "That," she said, "is because we weren't _here_ before. We got on this morning – you?"

The two of them then launched into a conversation that was more than a little passive aggressive and Newt laughed quietly under his breath. I took that to mean he was listening to them, so when he tapped me lightly on the shoulder, I assumed it was an accident 'til he did it again.

"Hey," he said, "Me and my big mouth – I never asked your name, and I'm getting sorta tired of calling ya' Princess in my head."

"S'okay," That seemed to be becoming my catchphrase, "I'm Lilianne Pasteur … You can laugh, it's funny." It was the second time I'd told someone my name and it definitely wasn't getting any less embarrassing, but Newt didn't pull a face or laugh at me; just shook his head.

"_That's _funny? Sorry, did ya' hear my name? I am – out of choice – a lizard for life. Come on, _that's _funny. Yours is nice – it's posh." He looked me up and down, but not in the creepy way Sam had, "Doesn't suit ya' though – it's nice to meet ya', Lily."

_Lily... Lily Pasteur... Yes._ I smiled at the boy and it felt like the first genuine smile I'd shown since getting up that morning – something that now seemed aeons ago. _Lily… _I liked that.

Of course, all of the usual introductory small talk that my mother loved kicked in about then. I'd always hated it –Who cared if this stranger had a soccer-playing older brother or lived in a flat in a quarantine town with fifteen cats and a budgie? But now, with people my own age (rather than the crazy hamster lady who'd lived next door at home), and in this screwed-up nightmare situation, it wasn't that bad. Minho walked over to join us, and I told them about my town, my parents, my house arrest _"So basically, you lived 'Tangled?" _and the way Dad had gone missing – thank God, they didn't give me the pitying looks and the apologetic nothings that usually followed the last bit. Newt told us that he'd been on the train from the start in London – and it hadn't just been a train either – it had been a plane, a coach, a number of ships and a Berg to get to where we were then. Curious, I tried to ask him about his home and his family, but he clammed up instantly at that, giving an vague answer about '_somewhere on the outskirts_' , before grilling Alby about his hometown – although having been on the same train as him for a fortnight, Newt must have known the answer. Karly and I exchanged glances – what was he hiding?

Karly's life had actually been pretty similar to mine, just minus the protectiveness. Instead of hiding out in her room, Karly had been one of the rebels, risking it out in a parking lot with the local boys. Alby had lived with his gran in one of the protected cities here in the US and had got on the coach a week after Newt. Minho had lived in a training facility in Korea anyway because of his Dad and reckoned he was pretty fit – though he hated running. He was just in the middle of a funny story about the time he 'borrowed' his Mom's German Shepherd cause he wanted to ride it round a race track, when all the lights went out.

* * *

"Ahh!" Karly shrieked and clutched at Minho – which he sounded rather smug about, and some others made sounds of surprise but Newt and Alby just groaned.

"Here we bloody go…"

"What is it? What's going on?" I asked Newt, tapping him on the shoulder hurriedly – at least, I assumed it was him.

"Ah, nothin' – keep your undies on, all of ya' – happens every night. They take the phrase 'lights out' buggin' seriously here." He gave a soft laugh and yawned as Alby added:

"Ain't nothin' to do but quit your piping and sleep – they give us exactly nine hours, so you might as well use it, kid."

I felt the boys move away a bit as someone took blankets down from the baggage compartments; the metal doors making an ear-splitting screeching noise as they creaked open, and started throwing the blankets around the room randomly – there was no real point in aiming. I caught one as Karly (I knew it was her, I could smell her perfume) reached out to grab my hand and pulled herself closer to where I was sitting.

"It's scarier now it's dark." She whispered to me, her previously confident voice shaking a little.

"Hey," I squeezed her hand, in what I hoped was a reassuring way, "It's all right, you know. We're still in a rusty carriage with a load of drama queens and cocky morons on the track to nowhere. We'll be fine."

She laughed shakily as Minho – who obviously hadn't moved that far – called out:

"Sure thing – which one am I?"

"The drama queen…" Newt's voice, from somewhere in front of me, much sleepier now than it had been a few minutes ago, "Now shut ya' hole and buggin' sleep – we'll be there before the lights come up."

As I lay back against the wall of the train, feeling the thrum of the engine vibrating through the metal, I suddenly processed what Newt had said. We'd _be_ there – wherever there was. And it was sort of ironic, plunging us into darkness like this; a metaphor for what was to come. Complete blackness – we had an idea of what was in it, but no-one was sure about what lurked there. Technically we weren't by ourselves – there were others– but for all we knew about them and for all we could see of them we might as well have been alone. The crippling terror was short-lived in the dark, but the uneasiness was always there and the sense of knowing that the only way out of it was to endure and wait for the dawn. So ironic, it's almost funny, actually. But the lack of light eventually had the same effect on me that it did on the others, and I lost the will to think very hard about it and about W.I.C.K.E.D and what the morning would bring… _what does it matter?... _I thought…_ it's not like I'm gonna have a choice…_

* * *

At some point, I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I remember is someone shaking me and hissing:

"Lily… _**Lily**__,_"

"Ugh…" Without opening my eyes, I lashed out at the someone and groaned – I'm not a morning person. "Go away…" Unfortunately, they didn't.

"_**Lily**_!"

"Mmmm…. What?_**"**_

This time I tried to open my eyes blearily. Nobody else seemed to be awake, as nothing but silence filled the air, broken only by the occasional snuffles and snores. It definitely wasn't morning, because I could see the moonlight streaming through the gaps in the blinds – something that only increased my irritation with whoever had woken me up, until a shaft of light fell on the person next to me and I saw it was Newt. He also looked half-asleep, but there was an excited light in his brown eyes that panicked me. So, ignoring my previous annoyance, I hurriedly pushed myself up from under the blanket, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

"What's happened? What's wrong?" He shook his head and touched a finger to his lips, '_shhh',_ before taking my hand, dragging me up, over to the bench nearest the windows before clambering onto the windowsill and motioning for me to do the same. I did, with little difficulty, having done it so many times in my window seat at home. He raised his eyebrows, seemingly impressed but was quickly distracted by whatever he'd wanted to show me.

"Look!" Newt's voice was an excited whisper, cutting through the silence of the room as he brushed back the scratchy blinds and pointed out of the window, "Look, Lily!"

I leant forward, craning my neck to try and see whatever he was so worked up about, rather than the train tracks I could see at the moment. It took a couple of seconds, "_Do ya' see it?" _'s and pressing my face against the glass attractively before I finally did. In the distance, somewhere near the end of the track was a village – no, not even that – a collection of buildings that were all white paint and blue strips, with lights in the windows. A large, illuminated sign that I couldn't quite read lit up the darkness around it. It was beautiful, in a harsh sort of way. Far prettier than my hometown, despairing, crumbling and Flare-ravaged – almost as pretty as some of the towns I remembered seeing on television – all neon lights and laughter. It was a mismatch of shapes against the black skyline, striking in the moonlight.

"It's beautiful.." I breathed, still unsure why Newt had woken me up to show me. He nodded but sighed irritably, like I was missing the point.

"Well, _yes,_ but look harder."

Confused, I looked again, forcing my eyes to focus on the glaring sign. Gradually, my eyes adjusted to the lights – and there it was, plain as daylight – I wondered how on earth I'd missed it before. 'The letters W-I-C-K-E-'D, were painted first, taking up almost all of the board, but in smaller writing at the bottom of the board were the words, 'SUBJECT TRAINING CENTRE.' Instantly, all the majestic beauty of the place melted away and a cold fear settled in my stomach. Newt looked across and knew I'd seen it, his eyes – unlike mine, which I am certain reflected my stomach's feelings here – were alight with nervous energy. He flashed me a slightly uncertain smile:

"This is it. It's _starting_."

* * *

**Hi everyone! I hope you all had an great new year :-) Happy 2015 !:-) **

**So they've arrived! Sorry this was such a filler chapter - I promise they actually get _off _the train in the next one! :-) **

**Okay, so school's starting again for me tomorrow, so it's going to be a lot harder for me to update - I'm aiming to post a new chapter every Sunday, which I really will try to do but some of them might be a bit shorter :-)**

**Finally - I have a question for you:**

**Obviously, because of the Maze Trials, the story's going to have to split into at least two POV's but I'm probably going to introduce this a while before they actually enter the mazes - So who's POV would you guys like to see? I'll consider anything - as long as it's not really out there, like a griever or something (although that would be cool) :-)**

**As always - Thank you for the lovely reviews - reviews make me _really_ excited and motivate me to actually write the story rather than think about it! :-)**

**Star****


	5. Chapter 5 - Small Kids And Cereal Bars

**I** **do not own TMR - The world/characters/central plot of Maze Runner belongs to James Dashner! **

* * *

_**Chapter 5 – Small Kids And Cereal Bars**_

It took about half an hour for the flashes of bright moonlight to wake the others in the carriage, and the same again for everyone to actually be conscious enough to react to our new surroundings. Our plunge into darkness and silence had happened in minutes, nobody really speaking – reversing the process was harder. Some of us – like Newt and me –were awake already, moving from blanket bundle to blanket bundle, shaking shoulders and coaxing people out of their fogginess. Others, like Harriet and Dmitri, were awake in seconds, brushing off sleep like you'd brush off dust. _Oh, to have a talent like that, _I thought enviously, as Karly desperately fought off my efforts to bring her back to the land of the living, pushing my hands away and whining:

"Nooooo – it's _dark_… You're so _cruel, _Lily."

Looking around at the glassy eyes and vacant faces in the carriage, I doubted that some of the subjects had slept at all – the poor kid in the corner had popped his head out of his cocoon to ask for a drink at one point – but his eyes were bloodshot and his tiny voice scratchy. Watching them, I suddenly felt really selfish; I'd been grumpy and depressing over being on this metal monster for a day but, if Newt had been tracking the days correctly; some of them had been here for almost a month – I couldn't believe no-one had thrown themselves out of a window yet!

But, anyway, Alby's idea had been to get everyone together to have a _calm_, _mature_ discussion about what we were doing next – which seemed like a great plan at the time – but as soon as more than half the carriage was awake, the news spread like wildfire and the room exploded into total chaos. People were flying around the small space, pressing themselves against the windows and shouting, scrabbling around on the floor for belongings that had rolled, some people burst into tears, others squealed and bounced around - it was a scene of absolute panic. _Everyone_ was freaking out and I was just about to pack it in and join them, when I caught sight of Minho sitting on the bench nearby with his eyes closed, humming tunelessly. Momentarily fascinated, I forgot my meltdown and, stepping over the people crawling about, sat down next to him.

"What are you doing!?" I shouted into his ear.

"Shutting them out!" He yelled back, "Seriously, there should be a limit on how high these people are legally allowed to scream – I feel like I'm on the set of freaking '_Alvin and the Chipmunks 2'_!"

I laughed and copied him, pulling my knees up to my chest and started to sing '_Don't Stop Believing' _loud enough to block out the chipmunks, butMinho's humming cut out instantly and he arched an eyebrow at me.

"What? It has the word 'train' in it!"

It was Minho's turn to laugh then, displaying his rows of perfectly straight, white teeth as he did. He shook his head despairingly at me, but immediately joined in at an ear-splitting volume; catching Karly's attention as she sashayed over to join in. I was surprised by how well it worked – we were so busy laughing and screeching our way through the verses that the noise of the others just disappeared – though you could say it worked _too _well. Everyone else did gradually stop freaking because of how loudly we were assaulting their eardrums, and they either sneered and turned their backs - calling us '**psycho losers**' - or laughed and jumped onto the mega-cheesy, dangerously off-key bandwagon. Sure, it was one of the weirdest, randomest moments of my life, and there was definitely something slightly hysterical about it – but, by giving us a moment of total hysteria, I guess W.I.C.K.E.D accidentally gave us one of the biggest tips on surviving the trials. Stick together and work as a team – individually we panicked and gave ourselves miniature heart attacks but when we got together, we not only got a grip, but performed some kick-ass karaoke! _Life lesson right there._

Newt had been sitting in the corner 'till then, obviously trying to talk to the blanket kid and convince him to eat one of the cereal bars we'd been given last night. I couldn't hear the words, but judging by Newt's exhausted expression, it seemed to be going round in circles. But then, the second we started singing, Newt's face split into a grin and he pushed the cereal bar at the kid, ruffling his hair and stood up, loping over to stand in front of me. He leant against one of the metal bars and started tapping a beat on the floor of the carriage with his foot, laughing as he did it.

"Come on, man!" Minho reached up and punched him in the arm, "Stop freaking _tap-dancing_ and sing!"

And when I played this back afterwards, this was the part I never understood: When Minho said that, for a split-second, Newt's eyes lit up like a kid who'd been given free rein in a candy store and he opened his mouth like he was going to join in, but then his expression flickered suddenly and he just snorted and rolled his eyes – though he never stopped tapping out the beat with his foot:

"Yeah … I don't sing."

There was a moment there, as Karly would say, where you could actually taste the awkward. Nobody quite knew what to say – but luckily, two things happened at once that shattered the silence and the awkward. The door to our carriage banged open. And the train stopped.

* * *

Everyone who'd been sitting on the floor or lounging around scrambled to their feet, whispering and shooting glances out of the window as four W.I.C.K.E.D workers pushed their way into the already crowded room. The view was exactly what Newt had shown me earlier on, just closer - the mismatch of blue-white buildings with their towering signs. The others were all gasping over it, but what surprised me most was the enormous number of people milling around outside. Obviously, I expected there to be people at the facility already, but lots of the people here were my age – some a little older, some a bit younger – and nobody there turned to look at our train as it sat there. Were they workers? Or were they the same as us – sold and trapped? One of the workers – a small blond woman with friendly blue eyes and a calming voice – stood on a chair in front of us and raised her voice over the anxious hum of noise that had erupted.

"Kids! _Kids!_ … Thank you. I know you're all very confused and you want to ask us a million questions, but right now I need to you focus and follow our instructions. As soon as you enter the facility, you will be taken to an assembly with the Chancellor where everything will become crystal clear, okay? Okay. Welcome to W.I.C.K.E.D – I'm Ava Paige and I'm going to be one of your training instructors while you're here, I hope you all had a comfortable journey."

A number of incredulous snorts and shouts filled the air at that, but Ava Paige just raised her hands and everyone fell silent again.

"All right – maybe 'comfortable' wasn't the right word, but you all did exceedingly well. Now, I need you kids to file off the train in an orderly fashion and line up outside according to the number on your identification – A's on the left, B's on the right. – Okay everyone, let's go."

Still sort of stunned, we all picked up what belongings we had and started to file out of the carriage silently. As our random High School Musical moment had taken place on the benches at the back, we were the last to leave the room. Newt pushed himself up off the pole he'd leant on and slung an arm across Alby's shoulders, spinning him around to look at the carriage.

"Ya' know, I think I'm kinda gonna miss this place." He said; a sarcastic smile on his face.

"Hell yeah – it's gonna be torture to sleep on an actual bed for once." Alby grinned and shoved Minho out of the double doors before jumping out himself, "Come on, Newton. Don't wanna be late for _the Chancellor_."

Newt beckoned to me with a grin and turned to the doors, "Ya' ready, Lil?"

I nodded and was about to follow him, when I heard a sniffle. I looked back to the corner of the carriage and I saw the blanket bundle still there, quivering. In the rush to get out of the doors, no-one had noticed the boy– the crush must have panicked him and the sniffling was rapidly building back up to a wail again. Newt hadn't heard it, so I called out:

"Newt! Tell them I'll be a second – I'm in B group. I've just got to-" Newt spun back to me and saw the kid too. He sighed and his forehead creased up.

"Oh bloody hell; gettin' him to move will take another day… Look, let's go and tell that Ava woman, they'll come and get him – seriously, he won't listen to us – I've been trying since buggin' France."

"He's French?" Maybe that'd help – I was awful at French but it was something. Newt saw the look on my face and shook his head again.

"Well, yeah, I think so, he seems to speak English– but Lil_,_ _come on._ We gotta go!"

"No. They'll terrify him even more than we did. He's never going to settle in if he doesn't at least trust some of us – you go, tell them I'm coming."

He sighed again and walked back to me, placing a hand on my shoulder. I jumped a little in surprise at the contact - _Oh get a grip, _I told myself, _He gave you an electric shock from the railing._ _Help the kid. _

"Ya' sure you don't want me to stay?" I stepped out from under his hand and began to walk towards the boy.

"No, it's fine –go!"

With a final lopsided smile, he did and I turned my attention back to the boy. _Take it slow. _I sat down on the bench next to the blankets and tentatively laid my hand on the first one to pull it back, wondering briefly if I should have let Newt stay – I had zero experience with children. When the kid didn't lash out or anything, I slowly peeled away the blankets one by one, like layers off an onion, placing them on the floor. The boy was young, even younger than I'd thought – maybe seven or eight. He was actually quite a pretty kid – his hair was all thick black curls and his eyes looked like they were bright blue normally, but they were swollen and red-rimmed from all the crying, the olive skin around them all puffed up. Looking at his little face, screwed up with abject misery made me so angry with W.I.C.K.E.D I could barely breathe.

Finally, painstakingly, I got down to the last blanket – a tattered pale blue thing, that I was sort of disgusted W.I.C.K.E.D had actually given to us – and reached out to take it off, when the boy let out an ear-piercing shriek, pushing me away and started to scream at the top of his tiny lungs, the tears starting to stream again. _Oh no._

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Okay, okay!" I reached into the blankets on the floor and picked up his ID tag, backing away with my hands up. "It's okay… Winston."

On hearing his name, he stopped ripping up his lungs. He clutched the thin blue blanket to his chest and looked up at me, whispering through cracked lips:

" 'S _mine_. They tried to take it away." His distrusting blue eyes brimmed again and part of my heart broke.

"It's okay, Winston – I'm not gonna take it."

"It's my blankie and I _want it_."

That was it – and I don't know what this was, my inbuilt motherly instinct or something – but I reached out to Winston and wrapped the blanket around his shoulders again, picked him gently up off the splintered bench and set him onto his feet.

"It's a beautiful blankie – but I promise you get to keep it. Now, how about we take blankie outside, so he can breathe some fresh air, okay? He must've hated it cramped in here…"

Winston gave me a strange look, then suddenly started to laugh – and I almost started crying myself, I cannot tell you how relived I was right then.

"Well…he does want to get off the train, but he doesn't _breathe, _silly! He's a _blankie!_"

The kid went off into peals of laughter at the idea and let me take his hand and lead him over to the door of the compartment. I almost thought I had this, when we reached the double doors and Winston slammed on the breaks. He stuck his head out of the door, seeing all of the buildings and the other kids – who were now trying to sort themselves into long lines – and then jerked it back in, a frightened expression on his face.

"I don't like it." He decided, "Who are you? Where are we? Those people kept poking me and throwing things at me and telling me to be quiet, when I didn't want to be quiet, I wanted to cry, but they wouldn't let me! They're all nasty people… Blankie doesn't want to go out there. Ever…"

I knelt down to his level then and pulled him back to the doorway, so we could see out of it. My friends were standing together, clustered at the front of some of the rows and I pointed to them.

"My name's Lily, kiddo – and trust me, I'm not letting anything happen to blankie or you okay? And you see those people there?" He nodded, "Those are my friends – and they aren't nasty. The shortest one's Minho – he can do a somersault, just like in the circus and he's nice! The girl with the blonde hair's Karly – she's got a little brother about your age, _she's_ nice and the tall one's Newt –"

Winston wrinkled his nose, "He made me eat a cereal bar. It tasted like dirt."

"Oh." I grimaced, "Um… Well, I'm sure he didn't mean it! But, we need you to come and line up with the boys now, okay? And we'll protect you from the nasty ones, I _promise_."

The little boy looked up at me then, as if he was considering it – considering me. His eyes stared at my face for a long time, checking I was telling the truth and wasn't just going to snatch his blankie away and lock him up the second he let his guard down, until he finally nodded slowly and asked warily, holding out his little finger:

"Do you _pinky_ promise?"

"I pinky promise."

Winston's face, still tired and a bit tear-stained, broke into a smile and he put his little hand into mine, squeezed it and jumped off the train with a yell, dragging me with him. When we landed hard on the grass next to the other subjects, he shrieked and spun round to me, his hands on his hips.

"Come _on, _Lily – you're so _slow!_"

* * *

Hi everyone - I hope you all had a great week!

Again - I need to apologise about this chapter - I didn't start this early enough today and I'd meant for it to be way longer, but it's really late where I am and because of my writing OCDness, I can't write any more tonight! So I'm really sorry - but yay, little Winston :)

On the bright side, I have a day off school on Wednesday, so I'll try and write the extra part of the chapter and post it then :)

Thank you for all your fabulous reviews! (I usually answer them by PM! :) ) And for your P.O.V ideas - the next Sunday chapter is going to start from Newt's P.O.V!

Have a good week!

Star *


	6. Chapter 6 - Corridors and Canteens

_**I do not own TMR - The world/characters/central plot of Maze Runner belongs to James Dashner!**_

* * *

_**Chapter 6 – Corridors, Canteens and Blue Plastic Chairs**_

While Winston and I were making our disruptive exit from the train, Ava Paige had been sorting the others into perfect, parallel lines outside the main building. Newt, Alby, Minho, Sam, Dmitri and some others I didn't recognise had been lined up in front of a sign simply labelled 'A', everyone clutching their plastic identity cards. An older lady with kind looking eyes swooped down on Winston the second we jumped out, and gave him a friendly smile, before leading him away and slotting him in behind Minho. As he was slotted in, he twisted his head back round, his blue eyes worried – _like a baby owl_, I thought – but I nodded to him, pointing at Minho, with what was supposed to be a reassuring expression and he stepped in (thankfully) without any screaming. Looking over at Group B, I pulled my ID from my pocket to check the number (**Subject B5**) and walked fast to the front end of the line, sliding quietly into the gap between Sonya and Mariella.

"Is that it? Is everybody off?" Ava Paige leant down to a young man with a clipboard, who whispered something in her ear. "Fantastic! Thank you for exiting the train so efficiently, everyone – your cooperation was highly impressive. Now, we have exactly sixteen minutes to assemble you all in the Lecture Theatre for 'The Chancellor's Welcome', so we need to move move move! Nick, Harriet – follow Dr Robins into the Theatre, lead your lines – let's go!"

There was a moment of confusion as everyone tried to work out who Dr Robins was, but once we'd established that he was the small, grey-haired man with a tweedy suit and glasses who looked like he'd just stepped out of the 1980's, the lines started to crawl warily forwards, following him towards the huge glass doors of the building.

_**Okay**_. I'm going to tell you this now – as a friendly warning – if you are ever interested in getting large groups of people (particularly hyperactive and emotional teenagers) into your nice, expensive building _never __ever _make the only entrance a revolving door. Ava Paige had planned it so well – getting us all through the doors, three in each compartment, would take precisely eight minutes, leaving us another eight to reach the Lecture Theatre. Except, she forgot to factor in the thrill of really seeing one of these things after the Sun Flares and the inevitable pushing of the automatic doors that followed, just to see how fast they went – as it turned out: way too fast for us to actually get out into the reception and not just get spat back out onto the pavement again. It took fifteen minutes, a lot of W.I.C.K.E.D employees getting red in the face and shouting and – I was impressed – only four slammed fingers to get us all into the lobby to count off. I think we may have just convinced Ava Paige never to have children.

The lobby itself was a lot smaller than it looked from the outside – and there were a _whole_ lot more people. Despite our deafening racket, almost nobody in the place turned a head– there were people tapping away at wall length screens with complex diagrams flashing across them, people running between rooms in blue shirts and white coats, people yelling instructions into mobile phones, people sitting on benches, eating like food was an inconvenience – tens of people, but nobody taking any notice of the twenty-six teens that were all staring, eyes wide at the organised chaos.

Ava Paige took in our faces and smiled, snapping her fingers and glancing at the clock pointedly.

"All right children – everything will be explained shortly. If we rush, we can still get there five minutes late!"

She signalled us toward the mouth of a long corridor and we followed her in our lines down what seemed like hundred of passageways, twisting and sloping down into the heart of the building – every corridor identical to the last. It gave me a strange feeling of being trapped – if we didn't know which one got us in, how could we know which one got us out? Sonya's forehead was wrinkled and she leaned backwards to whisper:

"This is horrid – I feel like we're stuck in an everlasting therapist's office!"

Mariella snorted and I grinned – I saw her point. The walls were painted a nasty coral colour and every one had 'calming' photographs of beautiful places before the Flares, bright flowers and sky-scraping trees, every five paces. It was supposed to be relaxing but with the hundreds of questions buzzing through our heads like hornets and nothing but the noise of our own feet on the floorboards ringing in our ears, the atmosphere just put us on edge – it's safe to say everyone was relieved when Ava finally stopped at a sign reading 'Lecture Theatre'. She turned round and raised her eyebrows.

"Ten minutes late, everyone? Not really a very good start, is it? Oh well, you can make up for it tomorrow –" At that slightly odd statement, people started muttering – _what was happening tomorrow? _– But Ava just did the hand thing again and the corridor fell silent.

"Now, file in silently, take your seats and the Chancellor will begin."

One of the other W.I.C.K.E.D workers swiped a card at the side of the door, sliding it open and our lines advanced again, down pristine white steps into the hall, where the Chancellor was waiting. The actual hall was the exact opposite of the corridors we'd just come through – and everything was white. Everything. The white didn't even _vary_ either, the ceiling was white, the polished linoleum floor was white, there were white plastic chairs set up in front of a white projected board – even the Chancellor's perfectly tailored suit was a blinding chalk colour against the podium he stood at. One of the boys – Jackson; I think his name was - groaned from the next row and threw his hands across his face:

"Argh! My eyes!"

There were some scattered chuckles from around the room, but everyone else's eyes were fixed on the Chancellor. He was a tall, middle-aged man with bright eyes and a kind smile, though the overall effect was diminished slightly by his noticeably receding hairline. The label on his suit lapel read '**CHANCELLOR JOHN MICHAEL.' **He continued to smile at us with creepily perfect teeth as everyone shuffled into the chair with their number on it and tried to push their belongings, with some effort, into the space below. Finally, when everyone had finished fussing, the Chancellor walked over to Ava Paige, took some papers out of her hands and knocked loudly on the podium with a wooden mallet he'd pulled from somewhere –not that that was really necessary (you could've heard a pin drop) but he'd probably been waiting to do it all day.

"Welcome, children," He began, with a voice that was just a little rougher than I'd imagined, "My name is Chancellor Michael and I am here to give you a very warm welcome from everybody here at W.I.C.K.E.D – we are delighted to have you all on board for the mission that is sure to go down in every history book from now. People will hear of your bravery for generations to come and we thank you for your help in advance. Now, I promise to keep this relatively short, as the extensive journey here will have tired you all and – knowing kids – will have also made you very hungry! So, as you all know why you're here, I will not go into that. I expect it is a painful and different topic for each one of you. At W.I.C.K.E.D, we believe in looking to the future, so I will tell you what I can about your immediate futures, rather than lingering on the world's past.

"You have been selected for a number of trials because you are all _immeasurably_ special – some in different ways to others. These trials and tests are being conducted to study your brain patterns to develop a cure for the Flare – however, the trials cannot actively take place for quite some time – months, maybe even years in the future. For the time in between you will be trained and taught how to perform to your very best during them. "We will try our hardest to give you a high quality of life here at W.I.C.K.E.D and to protect you from the Flare for as long as we possibly can. Do not worry: there _will _be a Cure before any of you gets hurt. Those of you in this room today are not the only ones chosen to perform this task –together there are several hundred children – you are merely the last train of subjects to arrive. Therefore, you will be given time tonight to stock up on maps of the site and supplies for your work, and to rest, and your initial training will begin tomorrow, to define what you all have to work with. Do not despair if your performance tomorrow is poor – you have all come from a variety of different backgrounds and cultures, so the results themselves will vary. You will be given many opportunities to improve both your physical and mental strength before the testing takes place. Now, rant over."

He flashed us the bright white smile again as a huge door opened up behind him.

"If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask. You may all exit in an orderly fashion through the door at my back – your belongings will be taken care of. Walk down this corridor, take three rights, a left, and another right, the second set of double doors on your left is the canteen entrance. Welcome to W.I.C.K.E.D children – I hope you will be very happy here. Enjoy your evening: work starts tomorrow."

And with that impersonal and slightly threatening finish, the Chancellor spun away from the podium and – accompanied by Ava Paige and all the other W.I.C.K.E.D workers – left the room via a (white) hidden side door. For a second, everyone was completely silent. Then, as usual, chaos took control – the information Chancellor Michael had given us hadn't exactly been surprising, we'd all expected about that, but ditching us in a white room in a giant building, with just one sentence of really messed up directions was not on the agenda. Most of the kids just ran out of the doors, obviously desperate to throw themselves into the maze that was behind them rather than stay in the white room any longer. Some people just sat down and waited for someone to come back for them.

"Hiya, kiddo."

I looked up to see Alby, with Minho and Newt close behind him. Karly was sitting at my feet, staring at the doors with her forehead crinkled, like if she stared long enough the instructions would appear long enough for us to write them down. It seemed like, almost by accident, the five of us had re-grouped. I tapped Karly on the shoulder and pulled her off the floor before turning to the boys:

"So what now? Is this a test? What do we do?"

Alby and Minho were silent, arms folded, but Newt suddenly snorted, making everyone jump.

"Isn't it bloody obvious? We all go out there-" He pointed back to the doors, the slightly surreal gleam in his eyes again, "- stop acting like sissy babies 'cause there's nobody to hold our hands on the way out and we find the main road - I'm tellin' ya - ya' think every one's exactly the same and it messes up your head, but there's always a road that leads everywhere – we just gotta find it!"

I was sort of impressed by Newt's idea and was standing up to go, but Alby raised his eyebrows with a teasing grin.

"Okay Bilbo Baggins, and when we find this 'magic road', we do what exactly?"

Newt huffed and looked more than a little offended, his hands on his hips. "Were you even listening? I never said jack about buggin' _magic _– ain't gonna need it – but when we get the _central corridor_, there will be people who know where the canteen is because food is sort of an important life source."

Alby rolled his eyes, but he was still smiling,

"Well, nobody's got a better idea – lead the way, kid."

* * *

In the end, I think we were all glad that Newt had taken charge – I don't know what he was seeing, but every corridor _did_ look identical to me, and judging by the looks on the faces of the others, they didn't have much more of a clue. When half-an-hour had gone by, just turning left and right with not one person in the same corridor, Minho started to get a bit twitchy. He tried to bait Newt into an argument with comments about giraffe's and 'mind the ceiling' but the boy just pretended like he didn't hear – which only made it funnier for us watching, because Min got more and more worked up with every jibe Newt brushed off. The shorter boy was just about to implode and punch him when Newt stopped at a frosted door and put a finger to his lips:

"Guys, shh..." He gave Alby one of the most ridiculous smiles I've ever seen and pulled himself up even taller, if that was possible, as he pushed the door open. "I told ya' didn't I? Only lovin' _magic_ round here is me."

_Wow… anticlimax. _For a second, I was embarrassed for him. This corridor looked exactly the same as every other one we'd trailed down, but as soon as we stepped forward, I got it. There were twice the number of doors here and – as there were only five of us – about ten times more people and most of them the same age as we were, everyone bustling around up different halls into different rooms . Minho exhaled and turned to Newt reluctantly.

"Dude, I have no freakin' idea how you just did that, but _… _respect."

Newt laughed, "I accept your lovin' apology! Just don't underestimate my power again…"

We decided that the best thing to do was just walk down the hall and look in all of the doors on the way – one of them had to be right – and as we did it, with Minho and Newt still bickering over Alby's shoulders and Karly whispering a rating under her breath for every male we passed, I suddenly felt a flash of affection for these guys. _Come on – you've barely even spent a day with them. _But, though I'd never been to high school and I was never going to get to– this was the closest I'd ever been to the things I'd spent hours dreaming about since I was seven. Just walking down a crowded hall, with absolutely no sense of direction, laughing and teasing each other 'cause there was nothing more important to do. It was actually quite a peaceful atmosphere - despite the chaos - until something so 'high-school cliché ' happened that it was sort of unbelievable.

"Hey loser! Watch where you're going!"

It was so like one of FJ's moron remarks that my head whipped around, but it happened so fast that nobody had time to move. An older looking guy with muscles like a wrestler, a black buzz cut and the menacing grin I'd seen on a million bullies back home, reached out and threw the boy who'd passed him across the hall, like the kid weighed no more than a feather. Karly screamed and Newt stepped forward to help but before he could react, the kid slammed into him with all the force of Buzz-Cut's Superman throw, sending him sprawling into a row of foldable blue plastic chairs that were lined up outside an office. The whole row went down like dominos, three or four landing on top of him with a crash as he fell.

"Oh my Gosh!" The kid – who had landed a few feet away – sprang up unhurt, horror plastered across his face. He took in Newt's grimace of pain as we helped him up and his admittedly intimidating height and the horror intensified. The boy ran over and tried to pick up one of the chairs across one of Newt's legs, all the while, spluttering panicked apologies.

"Oh my Gosh – I am _so sorry_, seriously – are you okay? Are you sure? Oh no, oh no, I'm am really _really _sorry, this is terrible – I knew I'd do something like this, my Mom told me I messed everything up - I'VE ONLY BEEN HERE THREE DAYS! I'm so, so sorry – are you alright?"

Newt rubbed the back of his neck and groaned.

"Yeah… Ugh, that hurts like a _mother_… Yeah, it's okay, I saw the bloody Neanderthal. I've had worse – plus, ya' hurt the chairs a little more than ya' hurt me, dont'cha think?"

We all looked across at the hall, which was now a sea of blue plastic – some of which I don't think could ever be bent back into shape again… The boy still looked guilty, despite the apology, and gave us a quavering smile.

"Probably… Thanks. I'm Gally, by the way - Gally Leonis – I'm thirteen. Can I, um, help you guys – consider it repayment for me almost crippling your friend?"

Newt snorted again and shook Gally's outstretched hand before introducing us all at a hundred miles an hour. "I told ya, kid, I've had way worse. Now, I'm not forcin' ya' or anythin' but, do ya' know where the Canteen is? We were sorta hopin' to get there before next week…"

* * *

The Canteen. Think about it. When I pictured that, I always pictured a tiny, grotty school hall with five tables. Lies – it's all lies. The W.I.C.K.E.D canteen was bigger than my whole backyard. There were at least fifty tables in there, with more than a hundred people milling around, eating, chatting, laughing. It looked so perfect, I half-expected Zac Efron to jump out of a closet and start doing a choreographed dance number on the tables. On entrance, we were each given a silver token, with 'W' embossed on it.

"Food tokens" Gally told us. "They say we'll have different ones during training to match our body type, but for now we've all got these standard ones. It's just to make sure no-one eats like a pig."

Going into the huge Canteen had made us all realise just how hungry we were – the last thing I'd eaten was a cereal bar the night before – so we all headed over to the line of people at the food desk, hoping that the range of food was actually edible compared to the stuff on the train. Unfortunately, it became blindingly obvious as we got to the front of the line that the people at W.I.C.K.E.D were 99% scientist and 1% cook.

We stood there, looking at the five different coloured 'meals' – all a weird, liquefied mash with suspiciously shaped lumps floating in it – all looking at each other like, _you first! _Finally Alby spoke:

"Well, there's six of us… if we all try a different coloured gloop then _someone_ has to come with halfway average gloop…" He said it hopefully, his deep voice rising like a question.

"That's bloody awful thinking." Newt answered, eyeing the pinkish stuff closest to him, warily.

"It's not thinking," Minho laughed, "It's 'wild-guess-hope-we-don't-freaking-choke'-ing… Let's do it!"

Then, a whole lot of childish behaviour ensued – which I am not embarrassed to say I enjoyed – with everyone fighting over the six different colours:

"I'm having the red one!"

"No way, man – I _totally _called dibs on the red one!"

"Sucks for you!"

"You _cannot _leave me with the sludge coloured one guys – I hate you all!"

"Meh, I can live with the pain…"

Can I just say (as the storyteller, I am allowed to be biased), I totally won that. The sludge one tasted like raspberries – if you forgot about what you were actually eating. The red one was a complete let down, and Minho actually gagged (apparently it was pickle, but I'm not sure _anyone _would be that cruel). But when we'd all finished – after a lot of gloop sharing out and an unholy amount of tap-water – we all had tears pouring down our faces. Karly reached across me and punched Minho in the arm.

"Our first daring act at W.I.C.K.E.D. – Well done squad."

_Even now, looking back, that was one of the best days I can remember – 'cause it was all downhill from there._

* * *

**Hey everyone! I hope you all had a good weekend :)**

**So, this is the chapter I wrote on Wednesday, but I decided to expand it into a longer chapter rather than just 700 words - which it was before :) I'm sorry - that meant that not much happened again, 'cause they're all still meeting each other, but Subject Bootcamp is starting next chapter (with a bit of a look at Newt's past...) , so there should be a bit more action!**

**Thank you all so much for your fabulous reviews and support - It makes me so happy!**

**Have a great week!**

**Star***


	7. Chapter 7- Eggshells and Early Mornings

_**I do not own TMR - The world/characters/central plot of Maze Runner belongs to James Dashner!**_

_**Warning \- Child abuse and mild swearing in this chapter - If you don't want to read it, skip past the italics!**_

* * *

**Chapter 7 – Eggshells, Egos and Early Mornings**

**Newt's P.O.V**

_Eggshells. 'We have to walk on eggshells' she tells me. I've spent three years trying to walk on them – desperately faking different smiles, cowering in different corners, being a thousand different people – but every time I hear the eggshells crack and shatter under my feet. I'm too pathetic, too clumsy, too __**big**__ to ever hide for long… yet I'm always too small to protect her._

"_For God's sake, stop bloody humming, boy!"_

_I'm ten years old, sitting at a table. He's across from me, a newspaper gripped in his weathered hands. She'd gone out, a scarf round her neck as she kissed me goodbye - but I saw the ugly blue-black stain across her jaw. She sang to me the day before, whispering the notes into my ear. I hadn't noticed I was humming them._ _**Stupid, stupid, stupid**_. _That will have been the first straw._

_I clamp my mouth shut, trying to breathe noiselessly as I always do, casting my eyes down to the floor. I feel his glare wash over me, then a tidal wave of relief as his paper rustles – he's gone back to it. Silent, I pick up my pencil and continue to scratch her face into the notepad. The clock in the corner is ticking quietly, the noise strangely reminding me of a time-bomb as his pages turn and my hand glides across the cream-coloured paper. My breathing returns to normal. But then the kitchen window slams shut and I can't help it – I jump up, sweeping all my pencils off the table with an almighty clatter. _

_A flash of terror, painfully familiar, rips through my chest as I hit the ground, pushing it all back as quickly as it fell, not apologising, not speaking - not doing anything else that could make him snap. And for a second, nothing happens; he sits there silently, looking at the paper – just long enough for a sliver of hope to slip into my mind, as it always does – but it's only ever a second. His chair scrapes across the floor as he stands, his face eerily calm, and brushes his hand across the table, scattering my pencils again, but I don't move this time. I'm not sure I can; the fear is coursing through my veins like superglue, fixing me in place. He takes a step towards me and my breath hitches in my throat, but all he does is pick up the sketchpad and stare at her image. He stares at it for the longest time, the unnerving composure still hanging on his face, but I don't relax. I'm wondering what he's thinking, what his plan is this time – I know he has one. But I don't have to wonder long. _

"_You're __pathetic.__" He sneers, slowly, deliberately ripping my drawing in half. It always starts with the sneering – trying to get me to react. I sometimes think he'd be happier if I did. _

"_She's been fillin' your buggin' head again, hasn't she? Fillin' it with __**music**__ and bloody __**fairy-stories**__, like that's gonna pay the bills! The rent's overdue but if we sing a bloody lullaby and draw a pretty picture then it's all gonna be okay, huh?" _

_His voice is rising. I hate those questions - those questions that never have a right answer. I play it safe and do nothing. Wrong. He slams his fist down hard on the table, making me flinch, as he takes another two steps towards me. I can smell the beer on his breath as he leans down._

"_Huh! You mute as well as lovin' brainless?!" I shake my head, taking a wary step backwards. The mask of calm is slipping. "Bloody hell! That woman'll be the death of me – singing like a choirboy and looking all nice n' pretty won't get you nowhere! Oh, you might buggin' worship her, boy, but that spineless harpy knows __**nothing**__! Nothing! She's a bloody coward - Do you hear me?!" _

_Oh, he knows my downfall. Again and again - I always do it and I always regret it – she always makes me regret it. I know that every time, but I feel that dangerous surge of pure anger for her and I do it anyway:_

"_She's not a coward!" I try to shout it, and my voice wavers. But that never matters to him. I'd said it, hadn't I? I'd challenged him. I don't care what he says about me – but he can't talk about her. He steps back then and a threatening grin slips onto his face. _

"_You know she is, the useless bitch – and you're just like her." I feel my hands curl into fists, even though I know that's what he wants. It's his excuse every time. He sees it and laughs – not her laugh, bright and musical, but dark and humourless. How is it possible to hate someone so much and be so pathetically terrified of them at the same time?_

"_Go on– hit me then, __**Daniel**__. Be a bloody man for once." _

_He spits my name at me, dripping with sarcasm. __**Daniel. '**__Daniel in the Lion's Den' – I never missed the irony. This is the person he wants me to be. Like him. I want to hit him– I look at him, his powerful hands and his dangerous smirk and I see her and her bruised jaw, I hear her crying and I want to so much it hurts. But I can't, so I do what I'm best at – I run from him. __**Coward…**_

_I turn my back on him and bolt into the next room. There isn't any point – the flat's ten floors up and the only door's behind him, but I never have a choice. All I get to pick is where it happens. I hear him thundering after me as I throw myself into the corner of my bedroom, my heart thumping in my ears. I haven't done anything, but then I never have. He hates me so much he doesn't need it. I curl up as small as I can, wrapping my arms over my head – She cries harder if he cuts my face. My breath is coming so fast that my head's spinning and all I can hear is my heartbeat as I wait for him. _

_He bursts in, the calm now completely shattered, shouting a barrage of abuse so loudly that I can barely pick out any of the words, before he descends on me. I hear his blow before I feel it, a dull echoing sound against my skull, and a split second later what feels like a grenade goes off above my left ear, making me gasp in pain. But there's no point in registering that. I screw my eyes shut and ignore the explosions across my body – my pain receptors just giving in completely as blow after blow hits me – I don't even know what he's doing anymore – kicking, punching, cutting – everything's just a blur of pain. Above the mist I can hear him screaming words like "PATHETIC!", "COWARD!", "SISSY!", "BRAT!", words that should hurt me, but they don't anymore. I'm numb._

"_Not so pretty now, are you, you little freak?!"_

_He kicks at my fingers and I hear something crack and an echoing sound like a slamming door. I'm pretty sure I'm passing out until I hear the running footsteps… __**oh please, no. **__I don't even have to move my hands to know that it's her – her normally soft voice echoes around the room, fiercer than I ever remember it._

"_DON'T YOU TOUCH HIM!" She runs into the room, her blonde hair falling around her face and her brown eyes black with fury. I want to tell her to run, that I'm okay, to get away from him, but my mouth won't open._

"_DON'T YOU DARE TOUCH HIM!" _

_He turns away from me and my heartbeat speeds right back up, faster than before. '__**Do something**__!' The voice in my head screams. But I can't. I'm paralysed watching them, as he towers over her, her fragile body looking even more delicate than ever. He looks down at her, the controlled, threatening expression back as his lip curls back in a sneer, his voice low and menacing:_

"_Who the bloody hell do you think you are?" _

_He raises his fist and pure terror flashes through her eyes as she throws her hands up to protect her face. All of a sudden, the pain and the fright and the anger build up in my throat as he draws back his fist._

_And I scream._

* * *

I flew bolt upright in bed, breathing hard, the scream still caught in my throat. A single word kept resounding in my mind: _'Coward', 'Coward', 'Coward'… _

As almost always happened with me, my head hit the solid wood of the bunk above, the sharp stinging starting up and I swore under my breath. There was a second or two of total disorientation – I had absolutely no clue where I was – but then I saw Alby's face, hanging upside down in the air from the bunk above.

"Bloody hell!" I slammed back into the pillows with a hushed yell, "Don't _do_ that – ya' scared the undies off me!"

Alby would usually have made some smart-ass comment, but honestly, he seemed to be half-asleep, so he just yawned in my face.

"Ugh… Newt? You okay, man?"

"Oh…" _Had I screamed out loud?_ I really hoped not. I didn't come here to be Daniel. "Oh, yeah – ain't nothin' – just a buggin' dream. Go back to sleep."

He didn't take much persuading and pulled his head back into his bunk. I heard him snoring a few seconds later. _Lucky_, I thought. Wasn't much chance of me ever going back to sleep. My eyes flicked to digital clock on the side of the room – 05:30 AM. The people at W.I.C.K.E.D had told us that all the alarms went off at six, which was ridiculous. I was still so bloody jet-lagged that I could barely keep my eyes open, but as I had absolutely no wish to slip into another dream, I forced myself to start thinking about what had happened.

After I had so brilliantly helped us locate the Canteen and rubbed it in Minho's stupidly good-looking face for a while, it was getting late, so Gally took us all to the supplies room to check our names off a list. They gave us a hygiene kit – which other than the toothbrush and flannel, I have not examined yet – though judging by Jackson's pained screech of : "_Haven't these people heard of __moisturiser__!" _at half-past ten last night, the contents are pretty basic. Then we were given dorm numbers and assigned room-mates and told to 'retreat until the breakfast bell goes off.' Which we did do – though not before Minho had swapped dorm numbers with Karly (the scary blonde girl), I noticed.

_The girls… yeah. _That was going to be something that I had to get used to. Ordinary people were hard enough, but _girls._ I had no experience. Right then, I was just keeping out of their way – Mariella Curie had freaked me out and permanently damaged my eardrums enough for me to never want a relationship. For Minho however, they were all he could talk about.

"Dude – Did you see that blonde chick? I _know_ she's into me, her eyes never left me all the way around the canteen!"

"Maybe that's 'cause she was behind you in the dinner queue? And you stared at her chest the whole time we were eating?"

"It was fate, man! You're just jealous…"

Obviously, he thought the one girl – Karly – was the hottest thing since the Sun Flares. I didn't know him well enough (though I suspected I was going to) to know his type, but if I did, she'd be it. Confident strut, short skirt, impressive hair-cut and an apparently 'perfect' figure, she was basically the female version of him. It wasn't that I didn't like Karly – I did – but thanks to my sparkling, gentleman-like first impression, she was definitely wary and had said maximum six sentences to me since we'd got off the train.

The other girl, Lily, was from a totally different planet. Minho didn't think so much of her – he said her eyes were too far apart for her to be pretty. Personally, I didn't see it, but I guess he'd know. She'd plainly come from money – her accent would have been patronising if she hadn't been so nice after my whole I'm-in-a-bad-mood-let's-be-a-bloody-prat-to-everyone incident, and I thought Lily would be exactly the sort of person I hated. An arrogant, look-at-me, better than everyone else person, but she hadn't been. She was kind of quiet and had only spoken when she actually had something to say – but I'd only known these people a month and I'd already been labelled as a continuous talker, so she probably couldn't get a word in around my big mouth. And I'd _definitely_ been talking too much. Minho and Alby hadn't really noticed, but I saw her eyes when I'd slipped up with the singing thing. She saw it – and she wasn't stupid enough to let it go.

I looked across the room at the other five boys sleeping in the room and studied their faces, so I'd actually remember their names this century. The little kid, Winston, had been taken off with Gally and two kids called Jeff and Chuck. Lily had worked a buggin' miracle on the kid – when I'd tried to talk to him yesterday, he looked like he was torn between screaming and biting me, but she just gave the kid a hug and he shut up. Brilliant idea – I'd have done it myself back in France if I'd thought of it. But I guess hugs had been off my agenda for a while.

The trip itself had been absolute hell – to the point where I was actually questioning my sanity. The first week was the worst. I was alone with 'Black the Prat' who I was then forced to make conversation with, and his life is about as interesting as his name. When Alby got on, everything got a bit better. He seemed like the kind of guy I'd always wished for as a kid – a big brother. He was smart, built like a truck and was probably the most sensible of all of us. He came up with better ideas in ten seconds then I came up with in ten hours – as displayed by my new low: breaking out of the carriage idea. Okay, that was mainly based on the fact I was going nuts stuck in there, but had I not got my undies in a twist and listened to his idea (_stay in the carriage, we're almost there_), I would not have a bruise that looks like the London Eye and an equally bruised ego. Talking of ego's, Minho's appearance two weeks later was definitely something. He earned my eternal respect through his carriage entrance – he threw open the door, stalked in and yelled, "**Minho is in the building, everyone!**" looked around at our expressions and went, "**As you were!" **, before throwing himself down in front of me and Alby. He was also built like a truck (you see why I'm feeling left out here?) and smart. He also had a natural confidence that oozed out of every pore in his body – the guy _radiates_ confidence. Normally, I couldn't stand guys like that, but Minho was actually really funny and some of the plans _he_ has… Well, let's just say he might be the reason I need Alby.

I was just about to reach up and wake Al anyway when the alarm clock went off, giving me a minor heart attack and I fell back off the bed, with a thump. The air immediately filled with groans, blanket rustling and Minho moaning sleepily:

"When I'm the President, mornings are _freaking illegal…_"

"Yeah, Good luck with that!"

* * *

**Hi everyone!**

**Yep, I've done it again - taken up a whole chapter with something that was only supposed to be a hundred words! I'm so sorry - I uploaded this part because I didn't want to not update - especially after all of your fabulous reviews this week :) - but I am going to try to upload the rest of this chapter (Trials/Strength testing) between Monday-Wednesday :) - although that will be pretty short!**

**What did you all think of Newt's P.O.V? **

**Thank you to all of you who reviewed/followed/favourited ING! :) - I am still in shock that so many people are :) I love you guys so much! :) **

**Have a fantastic week!**

**Star***


	8. Chapter 8 - Superman and Evil Schemes

_**I do not own TMR - The world/characters/ plot of Maze Runner belongs to James Dashner! – No copyright infringement is intended!**_

* * *

_**Chapter 8 – Strangers, Superman and Evil Schemes**_

**Newt's P.O.V**

An hour of moaning, washing, dressing, teasing, whinging, moisturising - and in some cases, just bloody panicking – later, I found myself back in the Canteen queue lining up for what was supposed to be breakfast. Everything was a bit quieter than it had been the night before, but the atmosphere was charged with excitement – _everyone_ was buzzing. We'd bumped back into the girls at the Canteen entrance (well, _bumped – _Min made us stand at the end of the corridor looking 'casual' until they arrived, to Alby's disgust), so the six of us were all squashed up together in the middle of the line, trying to guess what madness they were going to put us through next.

Lily – the brunette girl – was standing next to me, her long dark hair pulled back in a loose ponytail as she bounced up and down at my side. She was balanced unsteadily on her toes, craning her neck to try and see out of the huge bay window opposite us. I glanced down at her (and with the giraffe height I was trying to rock at the time, it was a bloody long way down), looking more closely than I had the night before. The girl was tiny – my Ma would've called her bird-boned – with sharp amber eyes that darted around the huge hall, flicking from person to person, trying to take in everything at once. Her arms were wrapped tight around her stomach and a slight frown creased her forehead. I bumped into her lightly with my shoulder:

"Hey, you that hungry?"

Lily jumped, snapping out of her daze suddenly and looked up at me with a slight smile.

"After last night? I don't think I _ever_ want to eat again!" She glanced down at her position then and laughed. "Oh! No, I'm fine – Just a bit nervous about today, I guess…"

Then it was my turn to laugh. I pointed up the queue at Alby and Minho who were having a heated debate under their breath (I think it was over football or something) then looked very deliberately at myself.

"Excuse me, _you're _buggin' nervous? Have you seen those guys? I'm gonna get crushed in _whatever _we do today."

She smiled again and shook her head at me, "I don't think so – come on, you've gotta have at least a foot on both of them!"

"Yeah, probably, but I'm a walking stick insect – I have no strength _at_ _all_. Every bloody centimetre I've got on them, they've got about five pounds on me! Plus I think that kid yesterday didbuggin' cripple me – _everything_ hurts!"

Lily raised her eyebrows at my metaphor (William Shakespeare, eat your heart out) and nodded, in what seemed to be agreement – which I was sort of offended by (she wasn't supposed to _agree _with me) – but then she held out one of her own stick-thin arms with clear irritation on her face.

"Hmm, okay, but you're looking at the girl who hasn't even been _outside_ for five years – I've got to have some kind of Vitamin D deficiency by now. We can die together!"

She tried to bump back into me with her shoulder jokingly, but it was like a pixie trying to hit a tree – she just hit my ribcage – which made her sigh noisily in mock annoyance and order me to bend down so she could do it properly. '_I know I'm a midget, but you don't have to rub it in!' _I started to laugh and was about to come up with some brilliantly hilarious comeback (probably) when we reached the end of the queue.

I was instantly confused. Yesterday, everything had been laid out in huge metal bowls on a long table and – though we could've been eating shredded paper for all we knew – we could see it all, we had a screwed up idea of what it was. Today however, all that was on the table was fifteen jugs of milk and a series of brightly coloured boxes with tacky lettering splattered across them. I turned to ask Lily about it, but she'd already sorted herself out and was way ahead of me with Karly. Now don't get me wrong – I'm not _stupid_, I can _**read**_ \- but while everybody else was walking along the line, picking up the nasty packages like they knew exactly what was going on, I was staring at them trying to guess from the brand names what was supposed to be in the boxes – it was completely alien. Just when I'd decided I was going to have to resort to yesterday's plan and pick whatever was closest, the kid behind me – a short guy with dark skin and thick black hair – tapped my shoulder and pointed to a simpler box on my left.

"That one," He told me, a friendly grin on his face, "It's pretty plain, but you can add stuff if you don't like it."

"Thank you," I exhaled and moved towards the box, flashing him a grateful smile as I poured the contents of it (little beige toast flakes) into a bowl. He laughed at my obvious relief, picking up some of the boxes for himself.

"You not used to all this then?" The boy gestured down the long table. I snorted:

"Ha! Nope - I lived on buggin' oatmeal back home."

The boy's face immediately contorted into an expression of pure horror, like that was the single worst thing that could ever happen to a person.

"Oh, you poor little _starving_ thing! How are you even _alive_?!"

His face was so totally aghast that I started to laugh again.

"I guess I'm tough– and it was pretty good oatmeal – Name's Newt, by the way."

I held out my hand as he tried to balance his bowl to shake it, before answering:

"You'd have to be! I'm Siggy Freud!"

"Nice to meet ya' – thanks for the help!" I called as I reached the end of the table and started to walk towards the others. He grinned back at me and yelled:

"Back at'cha – Good luck for today!"

_Bloody hell, was I gonna need it._

* * *

**8:30 – Lily's P.O.V**

As soon as we'd all finished eating breakfast – and W.I.C.K.E.D seemed to have just given in that day and shipped in a truckload of breakfast cereals – the usual workers stalked into the Canteen and sorted us into our lines. Everyone walked in excited silence down another twenty identical corridors before being taken down in groups of four in a steel-framed lift (they'd obviously learnt from the revolving door incident). When everyone had arrived on what seemed to be the ground level we were lead to a huge set of double doors. Ava Paige – who just seemed to always be there – stepped out in front of them.

"Good morning, kids!" She paused for us all to echo her, "I'm glad you're all learning your way around and enjoyed your first evening here at W.I.C.K.E.D. I hope you're all making lots of new friends! This room behind me is the training room and although you aren't going to start your testing there today, you will all become very familiar with it. Once you all settle yourselves, the Chancellor will tell you what your initial tasks will be. After that, you will be taken in larger groups to the various activity centres –"

"_Providing they don't freaking ditch us again.._." Minho hissed loudly, which made Ava Paige flush and look slightly uncomfortable.

"Um, no – Well, anyway, as I was saying, you will be taken to your activity centres and expected to perform as well as you can- you all work at your own pace. However, anyone who deliberately does not perform to their best ability at this stage _will_ receive punishment."

_Punishment? _ _What did __**that**__ mean? _Hushed whispering broke out, but we were all silenced by a deafening creaking noise as the double doors swung open and the W.I.C.K.E.D workers beckoned us through.

Everyone's jaw dropped. If we thought the Canteen had been impressive, this room was off the scale. It was enormous – easily forty foot up to the ceiling – and then the length of one and a half football pitches to boot.

If I said the words 'Training Centre' to you, what would you think? I'll give you a couple of seconds to think about it. Well, I can guarantee, anything you just thought – weapons, weights, knots, climbing ropes, creepy holograph images and surveillance cameras – it was all there, times a hundred. It was like a scene from one of the crazy sci-fi films my Dad used to make me watch.

And the people – the _noise_ – there were people everywhere. There were a ton of W.I.C.K.E.D workers again, trying to line us up quietly to listen to the Chancellor, but they had to scream at the tops of their voices to even get people to look their way, over the wave of chatter that was crashing through the hall. There must have been at least three hundred people in that room, with every height, ethnicity, build, character that was humanly possible – and we all seemed to be between the ages of about five and eighteen. _Weird_.

The Chancellor was there again, standing on a platform with some other people in business suits and two tiny looking kids with clipboards and sharp eyes. I watched him snap his fingers at the nearest suit man, who whispered something to an attendant and pressed a huge red button set into the black steel wall. The air suddenly filled with a horrible screeching sound, like nails scraping down a chalkboard and everyone's hands flew to their ears in a vain effort to protect themselves from the pain. The Chancellor just stood there, watching us all yelp and writhe around for a while, a distressed expression painted on his kind-looking face, before he finally snapped his fingers again and the horrendous noise cut out.

It took a couple of seconds for everyone to stop reeling and to pull their hands away from their ears, so the Chancellor immediately jumped in with a smiling welcome.

"Good morning, children! I am incredibly sorry we had to resort to that particular measure of noise control – it was the only option you left us. Do not worry – the ringing sound you can all hear will wear off in a couple of minutes! It shouldn't affect your performance today. Now, you are an intelligent group, so I am sure you have realised that all of you that are being considered to participate in the Trials are in this room now. The final number that will actively take part will be about one-hundred-and-twenty; so the rest of you will be Cut at various stages in the process leading up to the Trials themselves."

He said 'Cut' like it was capitalised. Karly shot me a worried look and I saw Newt lean forward to whisper something in Alby's ear. Minho and Gally's eyes were still fixed on the Chancellor, waiting for him to explain. He didn't.

"But none of you need to worry about that at the moment. Today is a day that is all about **you**! Celebrate; show off your prowess, all of your incredible talents-"

Newt caught my eye and mouthed: '_What __incredible talents__?' _ I rolled my eyes, shaking my head at him. _Pessimist. _

"-all of the aptitude and ability we will come to expect from each and every one of you across the next year or so. This opportunity will come in the form of a series of tasks; two of which will commence today. One of the tasks will not actually take place in here. You will be lead outside to our state-of-the-art running track-"

Minho and a handful of others groaned.

"- where you will complete the set course in fifteen minutes if possible. The second task will be to strategically battle one of our meticulously constructed automatons. You will be issued with a name badge in order to be individually scored in both of these tasks and as your guides should have already informed you, slacking will _**not**_ be tolerated. Anyone who does not wish to take part in the process may leave through the doors behind you – anyone who leaves will not be granted re-admittance and will be dealt with accordingly. Good luck everyone – lunch is at 2:15!"

The Chancellor then turned and left the stage, taking the businesspeople and the two children with him. Then, as always seemed to happen whenever someone left a stage, two doors opened on different sides of the room. The first had sunlight streaming through it, raising the temperature in the crowded room immediately. The second lay behind us and the W.I.C.K.E.D workers standing there with clipboards and eagle stares waiting for anyone to 'wimp out' and be '_dealt with accordingly'_. There were some wistful glances at the doors as a platform that looked a little like a boxing ring rose up to the left of the crowd, whirring and clanking, but nobody moved towards them. I was impressed and frightened – not getting Cut was going to be harder than I thought.

* * *

"All subjects numbers 1-25! I repeat, all subject numbers 1-25! Get over here!" A man with one of the biggest mouths I've ever seen was standing at the edge of the running track outside, red faced, yelling at the top of his voice and blowing a silver whistle around his neck at three second intervals.

"He's enjoying that way too much…" The boy behind me laughed, "I think we're in this for the long haul, people."

"Mr Clinton!" Fish-Mouth shouted at him, "Put a sock in it – save your energy for the track!"

The boy coloured slightly and some of his friends sniggered as the man carried on screaming at some people trailing behind at the backs of the lines.

"We're all going to be Cranks by the time you lot get here – move it! Well, it's about time, isn't it? No mollycoddling around _here_. Now you've all got here before I've been fossilised, welcome to your first task; I am Mr Mathewson and I will be your assessor! You see this path?"

He pointed at a smooth track that twisted up into what appeared to be woodland (it had to be fake – there were almost no forests after the Sun Flares) and everyone turned their eyes to it, nodding. _Ugh, _I thought, _it has an uphill slope…_

"_That_, boys and girls, is your task. Get back here in fifteen minutes and you will receive at least 80 out of a possible 100 points! Any further points will be added depending on how close to death you are at the end! Now, does everybody understand or am I going to have to _repeat myself_?"

Everyone nodded again, some people muttered "_Sure". _The enthusiasm levels were down a bit now – some people, like Harriet, were bouncing up and down on the tips of their trainers, raring to sprint off, others looked bored and indifferent, their faces blank. And then there were the people like me, who just had pure liquid horror shining in their eyes. _Forget __close__ to dead, I was going to be dust on the floor…_

He held up a large air-horn with the words W.I.C.K.E.D painted across it.

"ON YOUR MARKS, SUBJECTS! GET SET! GO!"

Bang! We all took off, thundering down the dust track in a way that was absolutely mental. There could have been a massive cliff around that bend and nobody would have a clue, we'd all just fall off like suicidal sheep. Not that I was ever going to make it there, though – we'd only gone a hundred metres, lagging quite close to the back, when my lungs set on fire. I leaned across and whispered to Karly through breaths:

"Do you – think - there are – minus points?"

She didn't look much better; her tanned face was flushed already, her blonde and navy hair falling out of its intricate plait. She grinned though.

"Heck, yeah – I'll race you to 'em!"

I snorted before wincing and wishing I'd saved the breath. People on television made this look so easy! I tried to turn my mind away from my embarrassing inability to run more than two hundred metres without collapsing, and looked around. We were in about the middle of the pack, keeping a mile behind the human cheetahs, but there was a cluster of smaller children and clumsier people stumbling desperately along behind us, so I figured it could have been worse.

The woodland was becoming more obviously fake the longer we went on. If you concentrated hard enough (and believe me I was bored enough to) you could see that every fifth tree had a small white flower at its base with a bee buzzing around it and an identical branch sticking out – it was totally computer generated. For some reason, that really irritated me. If they wanted to measure our brains as people living in real cities then they could at least tell it like it is! I was just about to elbow Karly, to point this out to her silently – relying on crazy hand gestures – when she grabbed my arm, digging her red painted nails into my skin and dragging me back to a slower jog.

"I – am not – doing this." She gasped, "I don't care – if we fail – I'm literally - about to die!"

Although that was pretty much exactly what had just gone through my mind, I shook my head at her slightly and tried to pull her along with me.

"Come on, it can't be that much further – you saw the people in there – we need to finish!"

She shook her head right back, strands of hair flying around like loose threads.

"Don't care."

"_I _need you to finish."

"Nope – still don't care."

"We might get Cut!"

"We won't."

"Fish-mouth guy could kill us."

"I don't care!"

"The boys are beating us, Karl…"

Silence. She closed her mouth and peered down the track, frowning. When she looked back, there was a flash of challenge in her eyes.

"Hmm… No way! That jerk of a Korean guy would never let it go…" Karly spun away from me and took off up the track with a renewed energy, the idea of Minho beating her by half a mile spurring her on. I sighed and raced after her, trying not to trip over the computer simulated stones as I went.

"Hey - Wait for me, you ditcher!"

Just as I caught up with her, even more out of breath than I had been before the 'Road Runner' stunt, I heard a soft chuckle in my ear and a boy's voice laugh:

"That has got to be the buggin' girliest run I've ever seen."

I looked up to see Newt jogging beside us, his dark blond hair falling in his eyes as he jumped over the twisted identical vines on the path. He did it so easily, his breathing even and his words relaxed, that I would have been impressed if I hadn't been so offended.

"Shut up!" I reached across and shoved him, grinning when he tripped and stumbled a few steps. "And if you're so good, _Usain Bolt_, what're you doing back here?"

He snorted at my insult before waving at Karly, who was doing her usual man-scan, looking him up and down. She nodded and said: "Mm, get a grip Newton - I thought you could run way faster than freaking Superman up there!"

Following Karly's accusing finger, I could just about make out the hunched shapes of Minho and Alby through the dust haze being kicked up. Newt just gave Karly his typical lopsided grin and told her:

"Yeah, I could."

He wasn't boasting – it was a statement. He gestured up to where the buildings were coming back into sight again. "Thought I'd save my energy, rather than tearin' off like a full-gone Crank. I know how to bloody _run_, but I haven't got a buggin' clue how to fight an automaton-whatsit. I'm savin' my smarts."

Newt gave us a sidelong glance and took in our dishevelled appearances.

"Plus, it makes you pair look less pathetic if I run with you."

His eyes glittered with amusement as we gasped in anger, and he sprinted off, dodging people to avoid getting sliced by Karly's razor sharp nails. We watched his feeble attempt to escape and immediately ran after him, half furious, half laughing, jumping the vines and kicking stones until we heard a deafening whistle in our ears.

"AHH!" I jumped a foot in the air as Mr Mathewson appeared next to us, a stopwatch in his pudgy hand. I gasped again in surprise, as I realised we were back at the beginning of the track. Mr Mathewson begrudgingly gave us a half-hearted smile and held up the watch an inch from my face.

"14 minutes 59 seconds! Cutting it a bit close there, ladies. Nevertheless, well done – good luck in your next task. Your scores are 81 and 81."

"YES! I _knew_ we could do it!" Karly grabbed my hands and squealed happily, seemingly forgetting that she'd declared her death just five minutes ago. I squealed with her jumping up and down, until I caught sight of Newt over Karly's shoulder. He was standing a couple of feet away with Alby, a smug grin plastered across his face. _Oh…_ It dawned on me.

"So did he."

Karl turned to see who I was looking at and slowly got it too. She stalked over to him, wagging her finger disapprovingly.

"You _evil genius_, Newton!"

He started to laugh then and raised his hands in surrender, his eyes a light copper colour.

"Well, what can I say?"

I slapped his hand in a triumphant high-five, before turning to ask,

"Where's Minho?" Alby snorted and jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

Looking over at the rest of the subjects, about five had escaped with their normal appearances – the rest were in different stages of exhaustion, leaning on each other, sat on the floor guzzling water at a hundred miles an hour or leaning over with hands on knees, desperately trying to regain the air they'd lost whilst violently swearing under their breath – and those were the ones who'd _got _back. Minho, however, was lying spread-eagled on the grass at the side of the running track, moaning with his hands over his eyes.

"Oh." We walked across to him and Karly threw herself down on the grass with a bright smile, peeling his muscled arms away from his face. He groaned at us.

"Just kill me now…"

Alby reached down and pulled him up off the floor, handing him a water bottle, whilst Karly sang:

"Not a chance. Come on Superman, let's go fight some robots!"

* * *

**Hi everyone!**

**Okay, first of all , I'm really sorry this has taken two weeks - I have a huge English Common Assessment (note the capital letters) coming up next week, so almost all of my time has been going into that! But, as an apology, this chapter is really long! :) **

**Second of all, I'm going to visit a relative next weekend, so the chapter might have to be up the next Tuesday/Wednesday instead! **

**I've had a lot of different POV requests over the last few weeks :) So, although Ch 9 will be from Lily's POV, the next one will be Minho's! :) Get ready for some trouble! **

**Thank you for the fantastic feedback/reviews, everyone! - You know I love those! :)**

**Have a fabulous week, guys!**

**Star* **


	9. Chapter 9 - Automatons and Irish Accents

_**I do not own TMR - The world/characters/ plot of Maze Runner belongs to James Dashner! – No copyright infringement is intended!**_

* * *

**Chapter 9 – Agony, Automatons and Really Irish Accents**

When Mr Mathewson had screamed some more at the subjects who'd passed out and had got us all moving again, we started to trek back towards the central building.

"Appalling job, the lot of you! I'm fascinated – how hard do you kids have to try to be this useless?"

The boy next to me grinned. He was short with close cut black hair and bright eyes – his name badge read 'Clint' - one of the boys who had finished last. He leaned over and whispered:

"I'm actually _brilliant_ at being useless – I have it at an art form. It's literally _exhausting_ being this pathetic."

I laughed behind my hand but Mr Mathewson's head snapped round and he yelled:

"I'm not going to tell you again, Clinton! Shut your mouth – this is a training regime not a _slumber party!_"

Clint nodded and apologised, but as soon as the assessor turned his back, he rolled his eyes, making a big show of closing his mouth and zipping it shut. Despite Mathewson's violent threats, everyone trudged down the hill, chattering noisily until the group that was swapping activities with us came up the path. I stepped forwards to call out to Dmitri, who had been sorted into that set, when I suddenly saw the state they were in. The others saw it too and the chattering stopped dead.

"Bloody Hell…" Newt breathed.

"_Gordon Bennett_ – You can say that again!" Clint gave a low whistle, his grey eyes widening in surprise.

After the race, our team was not in the best of conditions but compared to Group 2, we looked like we'd just spent the week at a health spa. Some of the older boys – Nick and Borro – looked unhurt but the rest were a muddle of bandages, bruises and (in some cases) blood. Two bandaged girls were holding up a boy with a black eye, Dmitri was supporting Jeff (who was limping) and – when I looked closer – it seemed like almost half the group was missing. Alby broke the silence as they passed us, yelling out to the boys at the back.

"Hey Borro! Where's the rest of your team?" The lanky Scottish boy didn't even turn around, just called back over his shoulder:

"In the Infirmary!"

As soon as Group 2 was out of sight, the air erupted into terrified gibbering, the panicked looks that had disappeared from our faces making a speedy comeback. _What the heck is the_ _next task?_ Mathewson had obviously anticipated this because his face didn't even flicker at the mayhem. All he did was pick up a megaphone he'd pulled from somewhere and shout:

"OKAY SUBJECTS! STOP GAWKING AT THE MISFIT TOYS! You know why they look like that?!" Nobody answered. "Because they _**failed**_! They were pathetic and they _**failed**_! And unless you all _want_ a trip to the Infirmary and a zero score, you need to stop crying for your Mommies and man-up, 'cause you're heading the same way after your last shameful performance! NOW, COME ON – MOVE IT!"

_Reassuring… _Most of the group looked pretty irritated by this rant and I heard Minho crack his knuckles behind me as we carried on jogging, his exhaustion gone.

"Forget freaking machines, if that guy opens his mouth one more time, I swear I'm gonna smash it in!"

* * *

It was one o'clock when we all re-grouped inside the training room for the second task. To everyone's relief, Mathewson had marched back up to the running track to deafen Group 2 and we had been left in the hands of Ava Paige. She was standing in front of the steel platform with the three black columns that had risen out of the ground this morning and held a small remote control with the numbers 1-3 across it.

"Hi, kids! Congratulations on your first task – I didn't expect so many of you to be here for the second one!" Ava gave a light laugh and looked at us to echo her. Nobody did. "Well, as you might have guessed from your meeting with Group 2, the second task will test your combat skills. Behind me there are three pillars – each one contains a different fighting machine. I promise you, they were all programmed to beginner levels and the machine you are assigned will depend on your age, height and build-"

I looked sideways at Newt and raised an eyebrow. He shook his head and mouthed, _'I have __no__ chance…"_ drawing a hand across his throat with a worried expression.

"- you have three minutes and will score seven marks for every hit you land on the machine. Your turn is automatically over when you fall or surrender. Be aware that the automatons have motion sensors and _will_ be aiming for you. The people you can see around the room will be watching your fighting style to determine your classes and trainers –"

There were two W.I.C.K.E.D workers positioned at each corner of the platform, all wearing white coats and tight lipped smiles. Next to Ava though, were two kids – older than Winston but younger than Gally – a boy and a girl. The boy looked at us warily from under a floppy brown fringe, his fingers clutching a silver clipboard but the dark-haired girl stood tall, staring openly at the group, her ice-blue eyes sizing us up, deciding what we were made of.

"- These two are Thomas and Teresa. They will become familiar and will get to know each one of you very well indeed over the next few years – the reason for their isolation from you will also become obvious during that time. They too will be analysing your performances today, as a mental challenge. Now!"

Ava clapped her hands together, "I wish I could tell you more but we need to see some impulsiveness in our Final Trial Subjects, so we need you all to display independence. Good Luck – The Challenge begins now!"

Ava Paige placed her hands on Thomas and Teresa's shoulders and led them away from the platform but their eyes never left us, even as they took their seats about ten metres away. A man's voice – deep and sharp – rang out from the speakers on the walls.

"Subject B3 – Harriet Beecher-Stowe."

Everyone's heads turned towards the tall, curly-haired girl standing at the edge of the crowd. She didn't look frightened – which was a miracle – but determination was painted across her face. The closest W.I.C. worker smiled, beckoning her onto the platform as Thomas stretched up to Ava Paige and whispered something in her ear. She nodded at him and pressed the final button on her remote.

"Advanced Level selected. Challenge commencing in Three – Two – One."

The air immediately filled with a creaking, whirring sound, metal on metal, as the second column rotated upwards. Harriet looked slightly worried now, balling her fists and rocking back and forth on her toes. Finally, after what seemed like a lifetime, a gap appeared in the pillar, widening with every rotation until something stepped out. When Ava Paige said 'machine', my first thought had been 'WALL-E' (you know – that ancient Disney film with the sweet robot?). Yep – it was nothing like that.

The automaton looked like a shopping mall mannequin but made out of titanium rather than plastic. It had a _face_. The second I saw it, I knew it was going to play a starring role in every nightmare I was going to have for the next five years. The bulletproof face was expressionless, its eyes black as coal with motion sensors flashing red behind them. From the neck down, it consisted of steel framing and plates, fused together but little metal spikes and studs stuck out along the arms at three centimetre intervals, glinting under the glaring lights of the training hall. Its hands were modelled on a human, with curved fingers and thumbs, but its nails were those of a catwalk model – long and sharp and deadly to anyone within a five metre radius. It didn't have legs – just a silver metal block that kept the thing hovering about ten centimetres off the platform.

_Wow. Dad would love this_, I thought,_ and he'd be able to tell me exactly where its weaknesses, blind spots and malfunctioning points are in maximum twenty seconds. _He'd always been fascinated with how anything worked, but machines were his favourite. When I was little, he used to take me out on FJ's Dad's tractor and we'd ride along the canal, calling out to the farm workers and the animals until the sun went in and it started to get dark. When we got home, Mom would run to the door and yell, "Where have you _been, _Jeremy!" but she'd always be laughing. She always knew where he was – until the day she didn't. Not for the first time in the last four years, I missed him so much that it hurt.

Harriet's brown eyes narrowed and she took a careful step back as a buzzer sounded, signalling the start of the task. The automaton lifted its metal head slowly, the motion sensors flicking from side to side to work out her location but Harriet wasted no time. She launched forwards on the balls of her feet, slamming her fist into its side – everyone cheered and a scarlet seven flickered onto the wall next to the timer. Harriet, spurred by the score, ran in again but the machine had logged her position and threw out a metal arm to stop her. She crashed into it with a gasp but, incredibly, didn't fall. Flying backwards, Harriet somehow got her feet underneath her and used the momentum she'd fallen with to propel herself forward, dodging under its arm to hit the thing in the neck. Its head snapped back but the metal nails sliced through the air in defence, slashing at her stomach. Harriet cried out in pain – it had obviously found its target - but even then she didn't give up. She jumped to avoid the spike it swiped across the floor to trip her but landed a second early and smashed her feet into it, bending the silver metal and scoring five more sevens on the board. Sonya Sarandon started jumping up and down and cheering:

"Go on Harri!" Harriet smirked but she didn't turn her head towards the sound, keeping her eyes focused on the automatons, watching its titanium arms flashing through the air as she ducked and weaved behind it. Alby's mouth was hanging open as we watched.

"Ain't she amazing?" He said to nobody in particular. The W.I.C.K.E.D workers standing to my left seemed to agree as they scribbled notes on their clipboards.

"Her speed and strength levels are extremely impressive for someone of her age."

"Evidently. Her confidence levels are running a little too high though – she was raised in a very dangerous area of the country – I think fighting is her first instinct. She could struggle in the Sense Tests."

"Mmm, yes. We'll have to keep an eye out for that."

Nobody was surprised when Harriet reached the end of the Trial without falling and with a phenomenal score of 119. She was practically pulled off the platform by her friends who all slapped her on the back, cheering and shouting until the deep voice rang out again.

"Subject B4 – Sonya Sarandon. Intermediate Level Selected. Challenge commencing in Three – Two – One."

Sonya – who was tall, but even skinnier than I was – scrambled up onto the platform looking absolutely terrified. She glanced backwards at Harriet who smiled and gave her a thumbs up, before trying to paste a determined expression on her face. When the thing finally came at her, she ran forwards as Harriet had done but she hesitated for a second before aiming her blow. Big Mistake. The automaton located her instantly and smashed its metal spikes into her left shoulder. Sonya shrieked in pain as the spikes pierced her skin but she lashed out wildly, hitting a glancing blow to its stomach – the crimson seven flashed up on the opposite wall. She sprinted back to the edge of the ring and kicked out at the machine, her feet making contact with the things right arm.

"I think she's getting it…" Clint whispered. Unfortunately, he spoke too soon. The automaton thrust out a metal pole from the block supporting it and swept Sonya's feet out from under her. We all gasped in dismay as she fell to the ground with a surprised cry and landed hard on her wrist. The buzzer went off, meaning that her turn was up – she'd fallen. But judging by the way she was holding her arm, she couldn't have carried on anyway. Two men in white and green uniforms ran in with a medical kit and led her to the side of the room, congratulating her on her 21 point score. I looked around the room for the next person to face the machine before realising in horror –

"Subject B5 – Lilianne Pasteur. Intermediate Level Selected."

_Intermediate level?! I can't even punch a butterfly! (_Not that I ever would, by the way_)I can't do this, I can't! _My head started going into overdrive until Karly pushed me up onto the platform, squeezing my hand.

"Come on Lil – Sock it to 'em!"

_Sock it to 'em? _ But before I could even panic long enough to ask her what to do the voice came through the speakers again.

"Challenge commencing in Three – Two – One."

_Okay, Lily. Get a grip. _The buzzer sounded and the automaton started to glide towards me, its spikes popping out of the metal with a whirring noise. The motion sensor fixed on me, while I stood there paralysed, and one silver arm swung out to deliver a knock-out blow. I yelled in pure panic and ducked, throwing an arm up to bash it away. The beeper sounded and I saw a seven flash up on the wall as my hand made contact with the cool metal. _Yes. You can do this. _

"Come on Lil!"

I didn't even know who that was as I dodged its next blow, feeling a sharp, tearing pain as the spikes cut into my cheek. I threw myself behind it, trying to anticipate its next move, but for a second it froze. _What? _Confusion fogged up my brain and I could hear the same echoes of bewilderment coming from the subjects. Why wasn't it beating the daylights out of me? A red light swivelled on the opposite wall and I got it- The motion sensor! It couldn't see me! If I could disable it, even for a second, I could confuse the horrible thing long enough for me to really bash it up. I tried to spin under its next stroke but it cuffed me hard across the ear, sending me stumbling towards the edge of the platform. For a second, I thought I was going to be forced to crowd-surf across the huddle of subjects below but I jolted myself away just as the people at the front started to look worried.

_Argh!_ The violence of the move sent me careering straight back towards the thing, with no way of stopping, so I flung my arms out violently and aimed for the eyeballs. The automaton slammed into me painfully, taking my breath away, but I'd done it – I felt the smooth glass under my knuckles and I saw the red lights behind it flicker and swirl. This was the only chance I was going to get. I attacked it with all of the pent-up frustration of the last few days - _This is for __Mom__ and __Dad__ and __Winston__ and __Dmitri__ and __Jeff__ and __Sonya__\- _kicking and punching at it, spinning around in the best circle I could to keep it confused, all the while hearing the points racking up on the wall – _**14,21,28,35.**_ But I could only confuse a high-tech million dollar, top of the range, custom made automaton for so long. Just as the clock on the wall bleeped a minute left, the titanium spike swept across my knees, slicing them up and the hand smashed into my forehead sending me sprawling to the floor as the buzzer sounded.

Now, some people – like Min or Alby or Harriet – might have been disgusted with my 'average' score of 49 but inside, _**I**_ was doing a happy gymnastics routine. I didn't care that I'd scored seventy points lower than Harriet – I was just ecstatic that I hadn't got knocked out or failed or died!

"Well done, Miss Pasteur." The W.I.C.K.E.D worker gave me my very own tight-lipped smile as I walked towards the platform edge, limping on air. "A cunning start."

I treated him to a full-blown smile as I sat down on the steps, trying to catch sight of Alby (who was next) to wish him luck – not that he was going to need it.

"Nice one, Lilypad." Newt reached up a hand to help me down from the platform, flashing a crooked grin. I jumped off and rolled my eyes.

"Don't even _think _about calling me that, Lizard Boy…" He snorted as if to say _'that's the best you could do?' _

"Great job," Clint appeared next to me, dabbing at my face with a towel he'd begged off the medics, "I reckon the floor really needed that hug."

"Hey!" I growled angrily at the pair, punching Clint in the shoulder. He pulled away looking mortally wounded. "And you're going to pound yours into the ground then, Mr Clinton?"

He smirked back, "Naturally!" before grimacing and rubbing the back of his neck.

"Ach, who am I kidding? I've got a snowballs chance in the Scorch against that thing!"

Newt suddenly made a noise of frustration bringing my gaze back to him. He was looked at Clint with his brown eyes narrowed, frowning and chewing a fingernail as he did so. Clint looked puzzled and slightly worried:

"What?"

Newt sighed and stopped biting his nails, but the frown didn't disappear.

"Ugh! You've got an accent…. I should know it!"

He was right. I hadn't noticed this morning but Clint did speak with a burr that wasn't even slightly familiar to me – though it obviously was to Newt. Clint just laughed.

"So have you – you're a London lad, ain't you?"

Newt's eyes lit up like he'd just found his new best friend.

"You can tell? Nobody else has."

"Aye – sure I can. My Pa spent twenty years there as a lad! He said you never forget the way you all talk!"

Now it was Newt's turn to laugh: "And what's _that_ bloody supposed to mean? I've got it anyway, you're Irish!"

"Sure – Dublin, you ever been?"

"No. I _love_ the music though – my Ma knew every folk song going!"

"Ach, you should've heard my Pa's violin – he could wake the whole town in half an hour!"

Just then Minho walked up behind them and rolled his eyes at me, circling his finger next to his head and pointing at the other two.

"Okaaay, now you pair have finished being freaking geography nerds, take a look up there."

Minho slung his arms around the necks of the other boys (impressive, considering the height difference) and pointed up at the stage where Alby was stepping down, a towel around his neck.

"You're up, N."

"Oh, bloody hell…" Newt groaned and stepped out of Minho's headlock as the words "**Subject A5 – Isaac Newton. Advanced Level Selected**" echoed around the hall. Just before he climbed the platform steps, Newt looked back at us with a mocking grin.

"Well, it's been nice knowin' you all! Thanks for being my friends."

* * *

**5:00 PM**

In the end, it was Alby who won the day, with his killer score of 175. His fighting style was one that nobody else dared to try and it paid off. Rather than wasting his energy and entertaining motion sensors, he just stayed stock still, like a rooted tree and just punched the thing, over and over and over again, ducking occasionally when the spikes came his way, but he just kept going like that for the _whole three minutes_. The W.I.C.K.E.D workers behind us were very impressed.

"Interesting – he isn't at all intimidated by it, is he?"

"No. And surprisingly, it has no connection to his life whatsoever. Make sure you put it on file and list him – Alby Einstein. A4"

When his score came up on the wall, everybody cheered and tried to slap him on the back – even Min, though he was a bit of a sore loser. Minho's style was sort of similar – it was all offence, no defence. He just threw himself around, backwards, forwards, sideways, kicking and punching as he went, spinning around the machine until everyone watching felt dizzy. He looked like a full-gone Crank but whatever his medal-winning Dad had taught him worked. His score was an impressive 147.

Newt on the other hand, had a totally different approach to everybody else. Rather than going for the automaton, his method was all evasion. He dodged and jumped, bending over backwards at times to avoid the swinging arms, each time he ducked he hit the floor twice as fast as the others had. Like Alby, Newt had the motion sensor figured out too and kept behind it when he aimed, knocking its head forward every time. But although he lasted the full three minutes, his defence method meant his score was only 77 – judging by the massive grin on his face when he jumped back down though, he wasn't exactly disappointed. And neither were the W.I.C.K.E.D workers.

"Wow – Remarkable. That kid's fast."

"Mmm, yes . He knows it too – particularly with a height like that, it's his only advantage. He has no upper-body strength at all."

"Powerful legs though."

"Well, yes - very actually. But that's understandable with his background."

"His right ankle's weak – but that's background again isn't it?"

"Yes. List him too – Isaac Newton. A5"

* * *

Clint had done all right – 63 marks, and Karly had been thrilled with a 56. The only real disaster was Gally, who just stood there like a rabbit in the headlights until the machine punched him in the head. He left on a stretcher. So, we'd escaped less damaged than Group 2, but its safe to say that, as we walked back to the common room, everyone was exhausted.

Alby took on the fatherly role as we slogged down the actually very pretty track, everyone leaning on each other.

"Well done today guys – we've shown them we ain't a bunch of sissies. Everyone was brilliant – we've just got to keep that up for a while, okay?"

Minho slung an arm around Alby's shoulders with a teasing smirk: "Actually, I think _**I**_ was spectacular today. I mean, _brilliant_ doesn't quite cover it – "

He broke off as Alby swatted him around the head and Newt shoved him with a grin: "Pompous prat."

We'd only gone a few more yards when the trees opened up into a clearing and we could see a gorgeous lake, with flowers and birds resting on the surface and water that was _way_ too blue to actually be real (but in my exhausted state of mind, I was prepared to let it go).

"Woah." Karly breathed and I was about to agree with her when I noticed she wasn't looking at the lake – she was looking above it. I followed her gaze and nearly screamed – suspended above the lake were two ropes, one above the other, and picking their way across it was what looked like Group 7. Every couple of seconds, someone would lose their balance and dive off into the waters below.

"That looks horrible" She shuddered. "I hate water – it messes up my highlights."

Alby nodded. "I think that's us on Thursday – it tests our balance and swimming ability."

"Ah, that's a piece of Canteen pie!" Minho bragged as we started walk again. He sprang up onto the railing and spread his arms, making his way down it, one foot after the other. "I have perfect balance."

Just then, one of the, uh, _heavier_ subjects on the rope decided they'd had enough and cannonballed into the lake below, making a noise that sounded like a bomb going off – we all jumped a foot in the air. A loud thump sounded next to Alby. Minho was sprawled on the grass rubbing his head, wearing the expression of an irritated child. Alby – being the nice guy he was – pressed his lips together in an effort to hide his smile:

"Uh, what was that about 'perfect balance', Min?"

To Minho's disgust, everyone started to laugh, clinging on to each other and wishing we had a video camera. Of course, it was only made more hilarious by Min's cries of "It isn't funny! It isn't!"

Suddenly, Newt grabbed hold of my shoulder, pulling me down and I looked across. He was doubled over, his head thrown back and was making one of the strangest noises I've ever heard. It was a frightening mix of gasping, wheezing and screeching all at the same time. Pure horror crossed Clint's son-of-a-medic face and he ran across to Newt, already talking at a million miles an hour:

"Okay people, back up, back up – give the guy some space! He's choking! Ach, I know how to do this!" He said, wringing his hands, "I know I do! You have to clear the airways, so I have to stand behind him and then you have to-"

He broke off as the noise changed and Newt started wildly waving his arms in Clint's face.

"I'm not –I – I'm not bloody –ch-choking!" He spluttered, "Stop-Stop! I'm – I'm laughing, you lovin' blockheads! Back up yourself – I'm okay!"

Everyone stopped moving and looked at him. I pulled him up off the grass and shook my head:

"You crazy Crank, you - He was about to do the Heimlich manoeuvre!"

"I _**know**_!"

Karly snorted then and punched him in the arm. "Man, there is something seriously wrong with you Newton. _Seriously. _That was like some kind of dying cow noise."

He straightened himself up and grinned again – It was obviously a trait he knew well and was willing to make fun of:

"_Dying cow noise' -_Well, I don't know about all of you lot - I know I never finished school, but I reckon I missed the how-to-laugh part of primary!"

Everybody smiled again as we finally reached the doors of the common room, weak with laughter, hunger and exhaustion and Newt slapped Clint on the back:

"I'm sorry I gave ya a buggin' heart-attack, man. I guess we're all just a little bit weird."

"Whoa, that's okay" Clint grinned "I can do **weird**. Just **never** do that in the middle of the night!"

* * *

**Hi everyone!**

**Wow - mega chapter :) I looked for a way to split this one up into two, but there wasn't really any way to do it (I'd just end up with two filler chapters) so I hope you guys enjoyed it! **

**I actually have two questions for you all today:**

**1) I've been doing a lot of chapter/P.O.V planning this week but there was one I kept getting stuck on. When/if I do a Newt/Lily first-kiss fluff chapter whose P.O.V would you prefer it from? (Newt or Lily?) I'm leaning towards one but I'm not certain.**

**2) Do you guys like all of this before the maze stuff? I always felt like I need this part but it is quite long - I've been exploring the characters and introducing them and their relationships to each other, and I know that its the actual Maze and the Trial stories that you all fell in love with and I really don't want this to story to get boring :) So I'm sorry if I'm being paranoid :) But thanks for reading my paranoid question :)**

**I've had some amazing PM's and reviews this week - thank you so much, I love you all :)**

**Have a fabulous week everyone!**

**Star***


	10. Chapter 10 - Insults and Injuries

_**I do not own TMR - The world/characters/ plot of Maze Runner belongs to James Dashner! – No copyright infringement is intended!**_

* * *

**Chapter 10 – Injuries, Insults and Mysterious Pasts**

The Canteen had been strangely empty that night – at least a third of the subjects were in the Infirmary thanks to the second task, and most of the other groups had got back long before us and had gone to bed. Normally the silence would have been unnerving but there was a friendliness about the quiet that relaxed me – besides, nobody could keep their eyes open long enough to ask for the salt let alone have an actual conversation.

I vaguely remember Karly trying to talk to me about the boys as Harriet wandered around the dorm, flicking off lights but I don't think I actually answered her before my eyes slid shut and the world went dark.

* * *

**2:00 AM**

The next thing I remember is being shaken awake by a pink dressing-gowned figure that was bouncing up and down with excitement, whispering my name impatiently. _Ugh…_ My eyes flicked across to the alarm clock on the dresser: 2:00 AM. _Yippee_.

"Mmm…Karl? What are you-" The figure reached out and pressed a manicured finger to my lips.

"Shhh, Lily! Get up!"

It was almost pitch dark inside the dorm – the only light was coming in from under the door – and up until then, the only sound had been the steady shallow breathing of the ten other girls in the room. Now, I could hear the low hum of voices and shuffling feet outside. Frowning in confusion, I pushed myself up onto my elbows.

"Why? What's going on?"

Instead of answering me, Karly just snorted and dragged me out of the warmth of the bed, tossing my dressing gown and shoes at me as she ran towards the door. I hissed as the freezing wave of cold air hit me and hurriedly pulled on the gown while Karly beckoned wildly from the doorway.

"Hurry up! Quickly!"

I don't know why I went with her – probably something to do with the fact that only half of my brain was actually awake – but, yanking on my shoes, I hopped to the door and gave her my best 'this-better-be-good' face. Karly just rolled her eyes and laughed again, throwing a last cautious look at the others in the dorm, all fast asleep under the blankets, and pushed the wooden door open wide. I tilted my head back in frustration and sighed, but - not wanting to leave her to be arrested alone by the W.I.C.K.E.D workers that wandered the halls- I didn't exactly have any choice but to follow her.

"Oooh…" It was even colder in the corridor than it was in the room and blindingly bright – it took a couple of seconds for the burning light behind my eyes to dim enough for me to actually see. When I eventually did stop blinking like a sleepy rabbit in the headlights, the blurry figures of Minho, Clint and Newt flickered into shape, leaning back on the cream wall of the corridor. _Well, I should have guessed. _All three were in the regulation white pyjamas – Clint and Newt looked as tired as I felt - but Minho was wearing a dangerous smirk that the whole camp came to fear deeply and carrying a suspicious looking plastic bag. I raised my eyebrows at them, grumpy and unimpressed.

"_Seriously, guys? _What is this?" I marched over and examined the contents of the bag, "And where did you get three rolls of plastic wrap?!"

Clint snorted and shrugged his shoulders, whispering irritably: "Honestly, he's had me up for half an hour and I _still_ want to know the answer to that…"

Minho just grinned round at us and said, "Patience, children. _I_ am showing you boring townies how to live a little!"

"Maybe I don't want to live," Newt grumbled, rubbing his eyes. "I want to buggin' sleep."

"You can't sleep if you're not freaking alive, Newton. Come on."

Karly walked over to Minho and shoved him, hands on her hips. "Okay then, Superman. I wanna live. How exactly are you planning on doing this?"

"Aha!" The glint was back in the Korean boy's eyes. "_That_, Barbie, is what you are about to find out…"

He let that hang there ominously for a second, before running to the back and herding the four of us up the empty corridor like cattle, the creepy grin never leaving his face. Everyone groaned but we didn't exactly have the energy to protest, so let ourselves be herded past four silent dorm rooms, empty offices and common rooms until finally screeching to a stop at a darkened dead end. This corridor was different to the others, dim with metal strips across the walls and what looked like a manhole on the navy blue ceiling. Minho immediately strode forwards, twisting the dial under the manhole with one hand and holding onto the metal ladder he'd climbed with the other. I exchanged glances with Karly, confused. _What the heck is he doing?_ With a loud creak that made me wince, Min threw open the hatch and swung himself up through the opening, before turning back and beckoning to us.

"Come on, townies! Up the ladder."

Newt was biting his nails again with a reluctant expression on his face.

"We're gonna be in _so_ much trouble."

"Is he even for real?" Karly dragged her fingers through her tangled blonde hair, raising a sceptical eyebrow at the hole in the ceiling. Clint snorted.

"He's a sure nutter is what he is…"

"Hey!" Minho's upside-down face appeared in the gap again, "_He_ can hear you and we're only gonna get caught if you lot carry on standing there wimping around! Come on!"

That was it for Karl; no one calls her a Barbie _and_ a wimp and gets away with it – and particularly not Minho. She had climbed the ladder and jumped through the manhole before Minho had even finished his sentence. Clint groaned in disbelief but, with a final look back to check we were still alone, followed her. Newt glanced at me, still unsure:

"You going?"

I nodded, grabbing his arm to drag him with me. "And I'll live to regret it…"

* * *

The roof. We were on _**the roof.**_

I was just about to start screaming and ask Minho 'WAS HE ACTUALLY TRYING TO GET US ALL KILLED BEFORE WE COULD GET CUT?' when I caught sight of the skyline. The night was pitch dark, so the town about thirty miles away stood out like a beacon against the black of the night. Hundreds of lights in white, gold and blue shone out like tiny pinpricks in the gloom, the tall silhouettes of five skyscrapers that had somehow remained standing and the quiet hum of a highway somewhere in the distance. The W.I.C.K.E.D roofs seemed to go on for miles, the silver sheets of metal stretching out across the whole campus. It was beautiful.

I heard Newt exhale as he saw it too, but watching him trying to push himself up out of the manhole flashed me back to the current situation. Minho, Karly and Clint were all standing at the edge of the roof crowded around the plastic bag and waiting for us to catch up. I couldn't even see their faces in the shadows.

"Where's Alby?" I asked, pulling Newt up out of the hole and closing the cover behind him. The blond boy snorted as we joined the others at the edge.

"Where d'ya think? He's the only one not bloody stupid enough to be on a roof at 2 AM."

Minho sighed when we reached him, unimpressed with our enthusiasm levels.

"Honestly, you'd think I asked you to watch freaking paint dry! This is gonna be the best experience of your sorry lives!" He spread his hands wide, looking around at each of our faces to make sure we were listening. "Now, here's the thing. Okay, you know that kid in Group 4? Franklin or whatever his name is? Basically he really ticked me off yesterday, but –"

"Why?" Clint interrupted.

Minho suddenly looked embarrassed by whatever the memory was. "Uhh, not important… _Anyway_, I heard him say at lunch that he'd noticed the Crank Alarms we've all got in our rooms and how freaking creepy it was, like how '_scary'_ it would be if they ever went off…"

"We are _not_ setting off a buggin' Crank Alarm on our second day!" Newt protested but Minho threw out a hand to shut him up.

"No we are not, Mr Newton, I'm glad you were paying attention. What we are _actually_ going to do is _so_ much better than that. That's where you guys and all this stuff-" He pointed down at the plastic bag. "comes in."

Minho sat down on the floor and began to spread out the contents of the bag. A buzzer, two orange walkie-talkies, string, three rolls of plastic wrap, something that looked suspiciously like pink Canteen gloop, a paintbrush, two mega-rolls of dissolvable duct-tape and the nail scissors from someone's bathroom set. _What? _I wrinkled my nose in confusion but Clint obviously felt the same way.

"Where did you even get all this stuff, mate?"

Min shook his head. "Again, not important – ask a _useful_ question, Clint. What isimportant is what we do with it. Just across these two roofs is the Group 4 boy's dorm, second window down on the left. There's a kid in there that's asthmatic, so they have to leave the window open two inches. Lil, Karly – you two are going to push one of the walkie talkies and the buzzer through the gap, using the string and the nail scissors. Then Clint is gonna plastic wrap the window – properly though, no messing around – spread the goo on it then plastic wrap it again."

"Meanwhile, me and N are gonna go through the manhole on _that_ roof and duct tape their door closed – and this ALL has to happen in under twenty five minutes, 'cause that's how long it is between the security camera checks. _**I**_, being the master of all things evil, have programmed the flashing buzzer to go off at precisely 6:00 AM, and naturally the idiots will think it's the alarm. Then, I'll use the walkie-talkie to make general zombie noises at them and when they try to get out, the duct tape'll jam the door – it'll be hilarious! And don't worry, townies, they'll all be fine – the tape dissolves five hours after you use it, so it'll disappear by 7:00 and I'll turn the speaker off – just in time for breakfast!"

He stopped, out of breath, a huge grin on his face, obviously pleased with his 'hilarious plan'. I had to admit it was pretty clever – maybe a bit wicked, but clever all the same. Karly had already picked up the nail scissors and the string – even Clint looked mildly impressed.

"Ach, my brother did that to me back home before the Flares – It was legendary! Sure, I hated him for a couple of days, but he filmed it and played it back the next week and I died laughing with the rest of 'em. All right, Park – as long as that tape _is_ dissolvable, I'm in."

Minho's grin got wider as he looked at me and Newt for confirmation. We nodded and he tossed the equipment at us, standing up.

"We're heading there – two roofs down!" He pointed across; checking we all knew where he meant. "Okay, team – move out!"

We took off, running across the roof, trying not to make too much noise above the offices – by this time all of the 'townies' were spluttering with laughter at the sheer wildness of what we were doing. If you had told me a month before, that one day I'd be running across a steel roof in the middle of nowhere with a 'popular girl', the son of a martial arts medallist, a mysterious Brit and an Irish medic to play a trick on a bunch of 'highly-intelligent' boys, I would have had a laughing fit. Little did I know that wasn't anything like the weirdest thing I would end up doing with those people…

"This is nuts!" Newt yelled from behind me, trying to blow his hair out of his eyes as he ran. "There is _no_ lovin' way this is ever going to work!"

I leapt across a series of manholes and ridges before yelling back. "Pessimist! We're supposed to be 'living', remember? 'S more than I ever have!"

I looked over my shoulder and saw his eyes flick around him, at me, at the skyline, at the others running on ahead, vaulting fences and dodging windows and his easy grin appeared on his face.

"Not being a show off or anything, but I've done this whole Roof-Runner thing before – it's overrated!"

"Oh yeah, Indiana Jones?!" The wind ripped the words from my mouth so quickly, I wasn't sure he'd even heard them.

"Yeah, I actually did it on New – Ah!"

A sudden crash sounded and he broke off with a yell of pain. I skidded to a halt, spinning around. He was bent double, one hand clutching his ankle, the other resting on his forehead, his brown eyes screwed up in agony as I sprinted back to him, putting a hand on his shoulder.

"Min! We've got a problem!" I whisper-yelled up to the Korean boy at the front of the line, before turning back to Newt. "What is it? What have you done?"

Newt groaned and immediately tried to straighten up, shrugging off my hand. He hissed through gritted teeth.

"I'm fine. I've – ah! - I-I've done this before – I'm okay! Look!"

He swung his right foot forward, but the second he tried to put weight on it, his whole face contorted in pain and he swayed sideways, grabbing my shoulder for support. I slipped my arm around his waist (I couldn't exactly reach his shoulders) and raised an eyebrow.

"Um, sure you are. Seriously, what have you done?"

Newt growled in annoyance, but managed: "Ahh - There's a bloody metal grille back there – caught my ankle in it. I don't think I broke it, but…"

The others came up then, looking worried. Before Newt could stop him, Clint had thrown himself down onto the floor and was examining Newt's foot.

"Ach – _nasty_. Nope you're right, you haven't broken it, you muppet, but it's pulled at best and sprained at worst. You need to go back, mate."

"I'll take him." I looked round at them. "You guys need to stay here, finish what you started – we can't all go in now or we'll look like something out of 'The Famous Five'!"

Newt tried to protest, "Really, Lil, I'm-" I met his gaze, trying to make mine as determined as possible.

"If you say you're fine, I _will_ push you off the roof and then you really won't be fine. You have absolutely no say in this." I threw my walkie-talkie and the string at Karly.

Minho nodded, looking almost guilty as he slapped his friend on the shoulder as gently as possible.

"Okay. You take him to the Infirmary and I'll keep the ball rolling up here. I'll come find you in the morning – try not to kill yourself on the way down, you idiot."

* * *

Half an hour, a lot of wincing, stumbling and almost falling down the manhole-ing later, we made it back down the corridor and slowly started making our way towards the Infirmary. Newt was still bright red and kicking himself every three seconds:

"Oh, for the love –I can't believe I just did that!" He laughed, screwing his eyes up again. "Ah! I'm sorry, Lil. I'm so _clumsy_ – there is no way I'm making it to the Trials. I'll just fall off something or get eaten by something or forget something or knock over something really dangerous; it's gonna be a bloody car crash!"

I shook my head as we staggered past the final row of dorms, "Come on, Newton – if it wasn't you, it would've been me and if it hadn't been me, it would have been Clint– so I think lasting a whole fifteen minutes was pretty impressive. Plus, you saved me from doing something massively stupid, like falling through a window or something."

Newt smiled before falling silent, his forehead creased as we approached the Infirmary doors.

"Lil?"

"Yeah?"

"Remind me - what exactly did I do?"

_Ugh._ I forgot we needed a cover story.

"Umm…" I had absolutely no idea. "You… went to get a drink and you tripped on Alby's bedpost and fell on your ankle."

"Okay. Where's Alby? And where did you buggin' come from?"

"You didn't want to wake him. I was in the bathroom and heard the crash."

He looked at me, his brown eyes managing to shine with amusement. "That's pathetic."

"You got a better idea, genius?"

"…Ask me tomorrow and I will have."

"Didn't think so!" I sang, "Some use you are…"

"Says the girl who runs like a chicken."

"Hey!" I reached up with my free arm and cuffed him round the ear, "I could just drop you and run, you know…"

"Like you'd ever do that, Princess." He was laughing now.

"Oh, wouldn't I?" I went to fake drop him, when the double doors swung open and a pretty young W.I.C.K.E.D worker stepped out. She had dark red hair pulled back into a ponytail and the badge on her uniform read: Nurse Alcott. She looked us up and down with a smile as we frantically tried to re-arrange our faces convincingly.

"Hello, Isaac, Lilianne. What on Earth has happened to you pair?" She pulled out her electronic clipboard while Newt rattled off the lie, his brown eyes widening in pain as I pulled him towards the door again. It was not a good story. In fact, it was a ridiculously bad story but Nurse Alcott just nodded at him when he finished and directed us to a couch opposite the window.

"Okay, well you sit right there, Isaac and I'll just fill in some forms for you – it shouldn't take long." She handed him a glass of water and turned away– but as she walked to the desk, she smiled back at us and winked.

* * *

**3:00 AM**

Nurse Alcott came back a couple of minutes later and bandaged Newt's foot. The room was eerily silent, nobody else there but the three of us and what felt like a hundred bleeping machines.

"It's only a sprain, sweetie, you'll feel just fine in a few days! Just you watch out for those bedposts – vicious they are… Now, looking at your little faces, I would love to send you back to your rooms right now, but I need you to stay here for about an hour, Isaac – just in case you hit your head falling. Lilianne can stay here and keep you awake, all right?"

As she walked back to her station, I suddenly realising how exhausted I was and a massive yawn overtook my body. Newt immediately copied me, rubbing his eyes and muttering drily:

"Bloody Minho…"

I laughed and pulled his hands away from his eyes. "Stay awake."

"Ugh, I _am_." He'd grinned at first but it gradually faded and his face took on a serious – almost angry- expression as he watched the skyline – an expression I'd never seen him wear before. "This is pathetic. Look at me – this is exactly what I said I wasn't going to do when I came here – _stupid, stupid, stupid._"

There it was again: '_when I came here'_ – normally, I don't think I would ever have asked him, but I was too tired to even think about social boundaries right then.

"You keep saying that."

His head snapped round and I realised that he hadn't actually been talking to me – he hadn't really been talking to anyone.

"What?"

"'_when I came here'. _Like you had a choice."

"Of course I did."

I was surprised and sort of annoyed. Okay, these people weren't as bad as I'd imagined, but Black hadn't given me even the slightest hint of a choice. _Why had Newt got to choose? And why the heck did he choose to __come__?_

"They told _me_ I didn't have one. That my Mom had signed me over."

"Yeah, well." Newt sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, "As I don't actually _have_ parents, that's, uh, never really been an issue for me."

_Oh gosh. _Nice one, Lily. Sensitive. _What do I say now? _I couldn't pretend he hadn't said it, that would be a million times worse, but how could I ask him anything now? The silence stretched out and I decided to bite the bullet.

"Oh… you're an orphan?"

Again he frowned and kept his eyes on the skyline. "Yeah, I guess. I've got a Dad, but…"

I wanted to hug him then and slap myself. Not having Dad was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. It hurt more than anything I'd ever known. Why the heck was I asking him about it?

"Where is he?"

Newt snorted, "I don't know and I really don't care."

The pure venom in his voice surprised me – so far he'd seemed like the nice guy, the one that was sweet to everyone, friends with everyone, but maybe it was more than that. Maybe that was who he wanted me to see.

"Why aren't you with him?"

He didn't answer for a long time and the quiet was painful, choking me and I was just about to apologise when he turned his head to meet my eyes.

"Um, I was… for a long time, actually. But…" Newt tilted his head back and sighed. "My father wasn't a good man. He wasn't a bad man either, but… he just wasn't the person I want to be. _I _wasn't the person I want to be when I was with him."

He was twisting his fingers in his lap, his eyes fixed on the skyline again.

"He made me so angry… _all the time._ I couldn't get away from it, but I couldn't tell anyone, I couldn't get rid of it. It was always there, even when I thought I was happy – it was there, right under the surface... _all the time. _And I hated him for it… hated him for making me feel like that – this blind rage, it shadows everythingand I hated _myself_ for feeling it. I was somebody else – I'm not like that, Lily, I'm not. I don't shout, I don't hurt people, I don't hate people, I don't lose it, it's not who I am… But it's who I was, when I was with him. And I couldn't do that. I couldn't be his bloody puppet."

Newt turned to me again, laughing softly when he saw my horrified face.

"I'm sorry… none of that made any buggin' sense did it?"

"Um… not – not really…"

He tried to move himself to the side, to see me better, but his foot caught and pain flashed across his features. Groaning in defeat, he looked across at me. "Look, do ya' mind if I..?"

"Sure. Come here."

I took his arm carefully and dragged him sideways until he was lying against me, his head against my right shoulder. "There you go. Better?"

"A lot. Thanks. No… I guess if I'm gonna tell you this, I should start from the bloody beginning."

"No, it's okay! You don't have to – I mean, I'm just really nosey- and exhausted… you don't have to tell me anything, Newt. I didn't mean it like -"

Newt smiled slightly, "Yeah, I do. I've _started_ now – it'll keep me awake… And it was a long time ago. I'm over it. But I'm warning you, Tiger-Lily, it's not exactly a happy story…"

* * *

**Hey ****everyone!**

**Sorry about the sort-of-cliffhanger... :)**

**Here comes the WHOLE story! :) Are you interested?**

**Thank you so much as always for all of your fabulous reviews and PM's (You all keep me going!) - I can't believe we're on Chapter 10 already! **

**Have a fantastic week guys!**

**Star***


	11. Ch 11 - It's Not Exactly A Happy Story

**Chapter 11 – It's Not Exactly A Happy Story**

"It was a long time ago. I'm over it. But I'm warning you, Tiger-Lily, it's not exactly a happy story…"

Newt's blond head was tilted back, resting on my shoulder as he twisted his long fingers absentmindedly, searching for the right beginning. I stole a glance at him out of the corner of my eye, but the boy's face was expressionless, totally void of his usual animated emotion. Eventually, he sighed heavily and – in a tone far quieter and more detached than I'd ever heard him use – began.

"Well… I was born in London in 2052 – you knew that. But I guess the first eight years of my life were about as perfect as any kid ever gets it. My Ma was a performer…"

His brow furrowed for a second as his brain dragged him off into some memory I couldn't see and, trying to bring him back, I asked:

"Was she good?" It worked. Newt sat up with a jolt, immediately wincing at the pain, but with his eyes shining copper.

"Of course - she was bloody brilliant! She wasn't exactly famous, but I always loved how impressed people were when I said her name – I was only six or seven but I thought the lovin' world of her. I was gonna be just like her one day… Anyway, my Pa was the CEO of a huge entertainment company based by the Thames River –'s how they met actually – and he got paid more in three months than most people got in a year. My Ma never cared about that though; she loved him – and being honest, I s'pose I did then. I took the whole thing for granted – the house, the lifestyle, the _happiness_ – all of it. I hadn't had to work a day in my life."

"I was eight when the Sun Flares hit. Not much happened in London to start with and nobody really panicked – it was all happening in the US and in Africa. Pa reckoned the whole thing'd blow over in a year, maximum and he didn't try to move the business from the river."

_Oh no… _I winced. Everyone knew what happened to London.

"Bloody hell, it was the biggest mistake he ever made and _he_ made more lovin' mistakes than there are Cranks in the Scorch. Obviously, two weeks later the bloody ice caps melted. The Thames flooded and destroyed half the city – everything from Camden to Lewisham – and that included Pa's base.

"You know, Lil, this is probably the one bit of the whole pathetic thing that I can't blame him for. When all's said 'n' done, he was bloody unlucky. It wasn't like the whole business was gone – we still had the offices in Coventry and Manchester, but who wanted a buggin' entertainment company when the world just ended?"

The boy frowned and rubbed the back of his neck, almost taking my eye out with his nails as he tried to remember exactly how it happened. Not that it mattered really – it didn't take a genius to guess the next part of the story.

"And it was the same with Ma, really. They stuck it out for another thirty days on the West End before packing it in for good. I don't remember it that clearly, but it was bloody confusing. I'd lived in a world of lovin' unicorns and happiness for most of my life – all this fear and shouting and chaos jacked my head up so far I couldn't think straight.

"Sure, we weren't poor. There was no reason for us to be buggin' bankrupt in a month, but Pa never saw it like that. In his mind, when the business fell through we were done for. Doomed. And I guess, by seein' it like that, he sorta made it the truth. We moved out of our house into a bloody awful flat in the part of London where three people get stabbed in the time it takes ya' to go to the loo and Pa started to drink what money we had left."

Newt's frown had deepened and he'd started twisting his fingers again. Already, I was beginning to get a very strange picture of his 'Pa'. My Dad's face sprung into my mind next to it – the two pictures painted in such different colours that it made my head hurt. Dad was probably the world's most optimistic optimist: if I broke a vase, he 'never liked it anyway', if I failed a test, 'well, I'd never do that again, would I?' If Mom nearly burned the house down cooking, then we'd invented a whole new shade of charcoal – 'we could make millions!' I don't think the words 'the black side' even meant anything to him.

But _his_ father… well, I already feared him.

"It wasn't that bad to start with." Newt continued, "We muddled through like we always had, trying to smile, sticking together. They even had me convinced we'd be okay. But then – when they thought I was asleep – I started to hear their voices through the walls, shouting at each other about everything under the bloody sun: the flat, money, the business, food… _me_. I don't think they actually started screeching, but in my mind it got louder and louder until all I could buggin' hear was their voices, on and on, making my little head spin. In the end, I must have screamed. My Ma came running in and held me. She whispered the same bloody lies they'd whispered before, _'It'll be fine', 'We didn't mean to scare you, Danny', 'It'll be alright.' _"

Danny_._ _That must've been his name, _I thought.

"It was a load of buggin' rubbish but I listened then 'cause I was a kid and I wanted it to be true. I didn't see the mark across her cheek. It took almost a year of screaming, crying, Ma hidin' her face for me to believe it. To see what he was doing to her."

_Oh gosh…_His voice had become distant again and he was staring out of the window at the lights in the dorm blocks. He wasn't talking to me anymore. I said nothing – what could I say to that?

"I was terrified of him, but he didn't touch me," Newt gave a short laugh, "Actually, he never bothered with me at all. Even before the Sun Flares I was a disappointment to him. Football was a bloody waste of life to me; I was awful at boxing and _cricket – _ha! All I ever wanted to do was go to Ma's rehearsals and get the stagehand to teach me guitar or badger her new co-star to show me his routine. I was alright at lessons but I was never the best – he didn't know why; I was his son after all and he was the buggin' child wonder at school, wasn't he? Why couldn't I be like him?

"He was that seven foot prat who ruled the roost everywhere he went, but he only got there by climbin' over everybody else and treadin' on their heads. So when the Sun Flares pulled the roost out from under him there definitely wasn't anyone there to catch him. All he had was me. The obstacle that watched him everywhere he bloody went – I think that was why he hated me in the end. He could threaten her as much as he wanted and she'd shut up. But I was always there, watching him, judging him. Still, the sorry shred of humanity that he had left kept him away from me. But that couldn't bloody last…"

Newt spat the last four words, before falling silent again. The only thing that broke the silence between us was the whirring of the logging equipment and the click-click-click of Nurse Alcott's computer. My head was spinning along with the dials in the machines, trying to process what he'd told me… I knew whatever had happened to him was on a different level to the rest of us – that some parts of it were really horrible but, _this_… And I got the sense he hadn't even really started yet.

"Seriously, N, you don't have to tell me…"

I pulled my knees up to my chest, jolting Newt a little and he registered my words, waking up a bit. He twisted his head round like an owl and gave me half a smile.

"No. I told ya, I want to: I'm just bloody awful with words! Min's pretty good - he wrote every rubbish chat-up line going - and Al just doesn't waste 'em. But _me_; I curse like a sailor then talk for England!"

We both laughed, somewhat pathetically considering how tired we were, but it was a laugh all the same. The momentary break from the misery of his story was short and soon he gingerly twisted back to the window, taking a breath to carry on.

"Anyway… like I said, it couldn't last. One day – I was nine, I think – I heard Pa shouting again. Calling her every disgusting name you can think of. She was crying and crying and something snapped in me for a second. I remember the bathroom door slamming and me running up the stairs to the landing." Newt snorted, "I think I threw a scatter cushion at him actually. And then… I don't really remember – they asked me afterwards and I didn't remember – Pa spun round and his eyes were wild. I'm not sure if he was seein' me there or what but he came charging from the room like a full-gone Crank and lashed out. He didn't hit me very hard – it was just a slap – but I wasn't expectin' it. And I was standing at the top of the stairs.

"The next thing I remember is an ambulance, lying on a bench feeling like somebody shot me. My head was pounding like a mother and, _for the love_, I thought they'd cut off my foot, it hurt so much. They told me I'd broken it. Pa was there, holding onto me. He was cryin' like a baby; big fat tears splashing onto my face. He just kept muttering, '_Daniel, I'm sorry… Bloody hell, I'm sorry, Daniel…" _over and over. They asked me what happened and for a moment I was gonna tell them. I was gonna tell them what he was doing. But then I looked at his face and, the buggin' fool that I am, I told 'em I slipped. And he smiled at me, Lil. _'Clumsy idiot, aren't ya' Danny?' _ In that second I thought that maybe I'd finally done it. I'd done something right, I'd been a man rather than a guitar playing sissy – he was proud of me. We could go home and everything'd be fine because he loved us and he'd be the man I saw in my dreams rather than the alcoholic that had been my reality. In that second I believed it with every bone in my little body. That dream lasted all of the three days I was in hospital.

It was the lovin' _stupidest_ thing I ever did. Ya' see, that day showed him that I wasn't gonna talk. He could break my bones and I wouldn't say a word. I'd given him permission to hurt me – his conscience was clear. I'm not gonna tell ya' what he did then, what happened – you're a smart kid, you can work it out – but every day of my life was hell. I spent two years taking the punches, running away from him, trying not to even _breathe_ when I was around him – the smallest thing ya' can think of made him snap."

Newt looked up at my face then with a questioning expression. I wasn't entirely certain what _my_ expression was at that point, but I'm betting it was somewhere between shell-shocked and horrified. He was obviously waiting for my reaction, waiting for me to say something. I shook my head and whispered:

"Why didn't you tell someone? They'd have had him arrested! – that's abuse, N, it's illegal…"

He gave me an almost pitying glance. "I know what it was. But that's why I couldn't tell – yeah, _they'd have arrested him._ What would me and Ma do? If they took me away then Ma'd be alone with him, and I couldn't leave her. Do ya' see?"

I saw. My heart went out to the tiny eleven-year-old in that freezing London flat with a monster of a father, crouching in corners and dodging blows. I wanted to hug him but I was pretty sure that pity was the last thing he wanted. So, I pushed back the mothering instinct and just nodded and sighed:

"Yes… What happened next?"

I didn't think it was physically possible for his expression to get any darker, but at those words his eyes seemed to shine black.

"The bloody strangest thing, Lil, is that I'm not really sure. It happened so fast – and three years ago – it's even blurrier now than it was at the time. I was sitting in my room with the door locked, playing my Ma's guitar when I heard him shouting again. I didn't do anything – it was always worse for her if I got involved – she cried when he hit me. All I did was play the guitar louder so I couldn't hear them; I tuned them out totally. But then something happened that had never happened before: I heard a crash and then the front door slammed shut, rattling the windows. I remember, I put the guitar down and walked to the door, listening for her voice, his voice, anything to warn me about what was coming – but it was silent. I'm tellin' ya', you could have heard a pin drop. In a way, that was the scariest fight 'cause I didn't know anything. I'd got so good at reading things just by their sounds, people's faces, but the whole flat might as well have been pitch black, for all I bloody knew."

I wasn't entirely certain why, but I suddenly felt a wave of unease as Newt described it. Something was wrong.

"I called her name a few times." He said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "But nobody answered – not even Pa to tell me to shut the hell up. My stomach just dropped, Lil. I hadn't even opened the door but I guess I knew it was bad. This wasn't a flare-up, flare-down thing, it was really bad. When I pushed open my door, all of the kitchen lights were on (they never were), so I ran in there – I think I was still callin' their names…"

He stopped for a second; increasing my unease by dropping his head to his chest and balling his fists until his knuckles went white. Reaching around the sofa arm, I put my hand on his shoulder.

"_Newt…_"

"No! – I – I've just never tried to say this before… not all the way through… No, I was callin' their names... I didn't see her at first. I was looking in all of her usual places: the armchair, the windowsill, the stove and I didn't look down. It was only when I tripped on the carpet and fell that I saw her… just lyin' on the rug like she'd fallen asleep there. I think I screamed. Her face was white… like a ghost's… her lips were blue and there were red marks on her neck, on her collarbone. I screamed and screamed at her … I was waiting for her to laugh, to tell me it was a joke, that it was okay. But she didn't. 'Cause it wasn't. He'd done it: after all those years of screaming at her, hitting her, he'd finally done it – he'd hit her and she hadn't got up.

"I felt so helpless, so bloody _useless_… I kept thinking: I should've told someone, I should've protected her, it should've been me, it should've been _me_-"

I did hug him then. He'd pulled his hands up to his face, so I couldn't see his expression. I didn't want to – I was almost crying myself. This woman he'd adored, who'd been such a star, an inspiration – both for Newt and on the stage – had been snuffed out by the kind of man I thought only lived in storybooks. It was sort of awkward in our current position, trying to hug him sideways without jolting his leg but in a weird way it worked and for a split second he surrendered, leaning his head back on my shoulder, before shrugging off my arms.

"I told ya'… it was a long time ago… My brain went into overdrive as I realised that Pa'd be home soon. And I'd be alone with him. Even now, I'm not sure what I was thinking – the only thing going through my head was that I couldn't live with him, not alone, he'd kill me or I'd kill him, I couldn't be there. So I did the only thing I could think of: I stuffed everything I could find into my rucksack, grabbed Ma's guitar and climbed out of my bedroom window."

"You ran away?!" An eleven-year-old, alone in the darkest backstreets of London? How was he even alive?

"Yeah, I did. Not sure I'd have the guts to do it now, but it worked out a whole lot better than the flat ever did. I _had _to grow up, I _had _to be tough – you were dead if you didn't show some smarts."

"What did you live on? How did you eat?"

"Well, Pa laughed at me for singin', for knowin' all of Ma's songs, but that was what saved me in the end. I could play the guitar a bit and I could sing pretty well. I trekked to the more crowded areas of the city and busked – all Ma's show songs, the songs I'd hear from other people's radios. It didn't get ya' much - £5 a day maybe, couple of chats with some old ladies - but water costs nothin' and I could live on bread and fruit for about four days at a time. S' why I made a right idiot of myself at breakfast this morning – I didn't have a clue what any of that fancy cereal was! You lot ditched me! I had to loiter there until someone showed me how it worked-"

I started to laugh, "_How it worked?!_ It's _cereal, _Newton not rocket science!"

"Hey!" Newt was trying to look wounded but failed miserably as he started to splutter as well, "That milk jug had a switch and a lid and everything! Oww, stop laughing, Princess, you're shakin' me - now do ya' want to hear the rest of this or not?"

"Sorry… Carry on, N. But I'm not letting this go…"

He smiled in defeat. "_Anyway_, the worst things were the cops and the gangs. My Pa did look for me, but he didn't do it very hard – there were posters of me all across the lower part of London for a while. Well, there was no buggin' way I was gonna let myself be recognised. I grew my hair out past my shoulders and, 'course, I lost a ton of weight, so there was no chance Pa'd ever be sober enough to recognise me. Then again, I never took the chance. I moved every five days – I had a circuit, see – Regents Park, Drury Lane, Oxford Street, Hyde Park and a couple of others and the Police had better things to do than look for me. I had some close shaves though – I only got away once by grabbing some poor old man and pretending to be his grandson - he was so bloody surprised that he didn't deny it!

"The gangs were worse. There weren't that many that were really dangerous. Most of them were like me, a bunch of kids just tryin' to keep themselves alive. But then, they were older than me and most had nasty obsessions with knives. I got mugged about five times before I realised that they weren't fast enough to get over the roofs. I could climb up pretty much anything and then run like hell until I got to a crowded area and screamed that I was being attacked." He laughed softly, "They absolutely loathed me. I don't know why they didn't kill me in my sleep."

There was one thing that I didn't understand about this story. To get me to join them, to get Minho and Karly and Clint to join them, W.I.C.K.E.D had come to our parents – Newt didn't have any parents. More than that, he didn't even have an _address_. How did he end up here? Why did he want to?

"What changed?" I asked. He looked confused, not understanding the question.

"Hmm?"

"If you were so good at surviving, why did you come here? If you get Cut you can't go home. Why risk it?"

"Ah…" His eyes darkened again and he nodded. "Yeah… Ya' gotta understand, Lil, in those years, - not just on the streets, but when I lived with Pa – I couldn'tbe noticed. It never ended well. I _had_ to make myself disappear. Not exactly an easy task – I mean, look at me…"

He twisted around and gave me a wry smile. And I suppose, in a way, that was the first time I did look at Newt. I mean, really look at him. Years later, I spent hours talking to him, listening to him, falling asleep at his side, trying to memorise every detail in his face before I lost it. But that was the first time. He wasn't exactly handsome, but with his dark eyes, fair hair and square jaw, he was certainly striking. That coupled with his distinctive accent and extensive height, he wasn't someone that was easy to forget.

"But I became brilliant at it – hiding, I mean. I became just what everyone expected to see. I was just another teenage busker: skinny, ragged, homeless from the Sun Flares – nobody looked twice. And that was fine; it was exactly how I wanted it to be – how I _needed_ it to be.

"I guess it _changed_ about six months ago. When I busked on Drury Lane, there was this old homeless man who used to sit outside the theatre with his dog and a plastic cup. He didn't always talk to me, but sometimes he'd call across the road, request something from 'Carousel' and toss me a 50p when I sang it or let me pet his dog. One day, I got to my spot and he wasn't there. It was just the dog sitting on the blanket howlin' fit to wake the dead. And I 's'pose it hit me then: I'd spend my whole life trying to make myself invisible, to blend in with the crowd and disappear but that day I realised something. I could die and no-one would even notice. No one would know who I was. And that _terrifies_ me.

"So when Black cornered me in an alleyway – they'd found my Missing Person records at Scotland Yard and my sightings across London interested them. They knew how fast I had to run and what I had to do to stay ahead of the police – when Black cornered me and said I had a chance to restart, to help people and stay as far away from Pa as was humanly possible I jumped at it.

"I want to do something worthwhile, _be _someone worthwhile, rather than a homeless teenager that died of the Flare. Prove that I'm not 'useless' and 'weak' and 'pathetic'. Prove him wrong."

He looked at me then, his story finished, the smile gone from his face and his brown eyes serious. "D'ya know what I mean, Lil?"

"Yeah." And I think I did. I reached over and took his hand, squeezing his fingers. "We'll be something, N. I mean, how could we not be? With Minho's sarcasm, Clint's mind, Alby's body, Karly's hair, your voice and my clumsiness – the world will tremble at our feet. Obviously… Seriously though Newton – we will be. Promise."

He smiled, his eyes lighting up. "Promise."

We sat there for a long minute, just looking out at the lights of the camp and the stars that littered the sky, thinking about what our new lives held until Newt finally looked down at our hands and chuckled.

"This is lovin' ridiculous – it's like something out of Lord of The Rings! Look at us – I don't even bloody know why I'm telling you all this. Why _am_ I telling you all this?"

He pushed himself up on an elbow, trying not to stab me in the ribs as he did. I rested my head on his shoulder and laughed.

"Oh, I don't know – you're tired, I'm tired, we're in our pyjamas on a hospital sofa and it's four AM. What else would we be doing?"

"Aha!" Newt raised an eyebrow with a grin, "You forget, Miss Pasteur, we _could_ be on the roof pouring custard on a second story window."

"We could… we could." I went to smile at him, but a huge yawn caught me part-way through again and forced my mouth out of shape. Just like before, Newt immediately copied me. He groaned,

"Ughh – do ya' think it's been an hour yet, Lily?"

"Yeah… and if it hasn't who cares?"

He nodded and moved back to my side again, resting his head on my arm.

"G'night Lilypad…"

"Night, N."

* * *

When Nurse Alcott came back, we were fast asleep in front of the stars.

* * *

**Hi everyone! **

**I know it's been over a month since my last update and I'm _so _sorry! I've been snowed under with work and exams lately - also this chapter is really important in Lily + Newt's relationship and a lot of what happens later on in the story comes back to this chapter in a way. So it had to be absolutely how I wanted to write it! **

**What do you all think of Newt's past? :) I hope it lived up to your expectations! :) **

**Thank you millions for your reviews and all of the encouragement that helped me to get up out of my revision and finish this chapter! I was exhausted and I really needed it :)****Happy Easter and I hope you all have a fantastic holiday!**

**Star***


	12. Chapter 12 - Pandas and Pop Tarts

_**I do not own TMR - The world/characters/ plot of Maze Runner belongs to James Dashner! – No copyright infringement is intended!**_

* * *

**Chapter 12 – Pandas, Pop Tarts and Sand-Filled Pits**

**Beep! **

"**The time is 6:00, subjects!" **

**Beep!**

"**Please report to the dining room in ****thirty minutes****. I repeat, ****thirty minutes.**** Your attendance is imperative: Sub-Station One opens today."**

**Beep! **

_What? Where am I?_

Suddenly, a brilliant white light filled my vision and slashed viciously through both my dream and my eyelids, forcing me to open my eyes. Through the sudden blindness and the lingering cobwebs of sleep that were still strung across my sight, I could make out two sets of bunk beds and blurry figures rushing around the room, pulling clothes out of cupboards and screeching: "**WHERE** IS MY EYELINER?! I **SWEAR** I LEFT IT HERE!" I was back in the dorm room. _Weird_.

Just as I was about to pull the blankets back over my head and hope that the fact that it was 6:00 and I'd got two hours sleep maximum would go away if I didn't think about it, Harriet appeared about an inch from my face and yanked the blankets off me (something she became outstandingly good at over the two years we lived there).

"Come on, everybody! UP, UP, UP! BREAKFAST IN HALF AN HOUR! UP, UP, UP GIRLS!"

A horrified moan sounded from Mariella's bunk near the door. "Ugh! Nooooo- I am going to have _the worst _bags under my eyes!" Her horror intensified as she stamped over to the mirror and squealed: "I LOOK LIKE A PANDA, HARRI! A **BLIND** PANDA!"

Even more noises of general irritation echoed around the room, everyone realising the extent of yesterday's injuries. Nobody could even try to sneak back to bed because Sonya had _**opened the curtains**_ and every human on earth knows that there is no getting any sleep after that monstrosity has occurred.

With a long-suffering sigh, I got dressed and scrabbled around in my backpack for my mismatched earrings, slipped them in and retrieved Karly's eyeliner from under Erin's bed. She grabbed it with a shriek of pure joy as I started to drag her out of the door, before Harriet left us to starve in the endless maze of coral corridors.

* * *

**6:30**

Despite Harriet's best efforts, by the time we got down to the canteen, about two hundred other subjects were scattered across the huge hall, eating, talking, reading and generally trying not to think about whatever _**Sub-Station One **_was. Today's breakfast offering seemed to be a limited assortment of pastries, in an array of lurid, artificial colours. _Yippee. _

With the same amount of enthusiasm we'd summoned to get out of bed, Karly and I had just grabbed some radioactive pastries from the table and settled into beanbags in the corner of the room to people-watch, when a body launched itself into the gap between us with a yell:

"GOOD MORNING PEOPLE! How are my favourite ladies on this fine morning?"

"Oh, hey, Minho."

I glanced up from my breakfast of E-numbers and smiled at him. Karly just raised an eyebrow and asked:

"And how many girls have you tried that on today, Mr Smooth?"

Sleep-deprivation looked a whole lot better on Minho than it did on me. Whilst I was certain I bore a startling resemblance to the Corpse Bride that morning, he still managed to look like a male model. Minho frowned at Karly's question and, to our amusement, actually began to count on his fingers.

"Um… Sarah, Michelle… Amy…three…six – er - less than ten!" He held up his hands in defence. "It was definitely less than ten!"

Karly shook her head in despair as he grinned. "You're disgusting."

"But handsome, so I balance it out."

Minho tried to put a hand on Karly's shoulder and bat his eyelashes at her, but she rolled her eyes and slapped him so that he started to slide off the satin bag and had to grab onto Newt, who had just appeared behind him with Clint and Alby, a look of slight confusion on his face. He dragged Minho up onto the beanbag again with a laugh, catching my eye as he straightened up. If it hadn't been for the smug expression that Minho had been wearing ever since he'd entered the room, the slightly sheepish look in Newt's brown eyes and the heavy limp he was sporting, I would have been convinced that last night was just a really strange dream. After the last few days, I honestly wouldn't have put it past my brain. Meanwhile, Minho was buzzing with energy, his gaze repeatedly flashing towards Dorm 4's still empty table, silently willing one of us to ask him the question. I gave in first.

"Okay, I'll bite. How did it go last night?"

Minho cackled with laughter (if I could use another verb, I honestly would, but there is not another word in the English language that resembles that noise), his eyes gleaming with mirth and even Clint laughed softly and said:

"Gordon Bennet, it was brilliant! I reckon someone needs to rethink the phrase: 'screaming like a girl'!"

Karly broke in then with another sideways glare at Minho: "Well, brilliant until _somebody _fell off the ladder on the way back and brought Ava Paige down on us!"

I caught Newt's eye again; _You see? If it hadn't been you… _He smirked as Minho desperately tried to defend himself.

"Hey! I totally saved us though!"

"Ach, yeah, if you consider stuffing the rest of us under the table in the nearest office and smarming your way out of it, saving us_._ '_Oh, sorry Ma'am, I couldn't sleep – I thought I'd dropped my identity card here last night and, since you're so observant and vigilant _(which by the by, mean **the same thing**), _you might have seen it?'"_

"Bloody Hell – ya' know I'm actually glad I left when I did!" Newt scoffed, "And she bought that? How are ya' even alive?"

Minho pulled a face, "Eh – yeah, she was too tired herself to do anything else! She sent me back to the dorm and told me I'd probably left it there."

I'd forgotten, amid all of the drama with Newt, that Alby actually had spent last night asleep, like a normal person, and was now standing (having had it rapidly explained to him) with a creased brow and an amused expression.

"For the love," he sighed, "I know you're a bunch of babies, but do I actually need to have you on reins behind a freaking child gate?"

Minho just copied his sigh and whined: "You're so _boring, _Al – it was hilarious!" as Karly wrapped an arm around Clint, finally cracking a smile as she remembered something.

"Yeah, and our baby Leprechaun here was having a heart attack, 'cause he could see Min's ID in his chest pocket! You were just like: '_Ach, my God, Gordon Bennett, oh my God.'_"

Everyone shrieked with laughter as the aforementioned Leprechaun buried his head in his hands, before pulling it out to retort:

"Oh-kay, well first of all, I **do not** speak like that…"

* * *

Eventually, just as Ava Paige was looking increasingly impatient, Dorm 4 trudged in. Chris, the oldest, quietly apologised to Ava Paige and sat down on a beanbag – the image of calm. Some of Minho's other victims, however, had not been so lucky. James was whinging shrilly and picking dried custard out of his coiffed hair, Bruno was scanning the room with a murderous expression and tiny Alvin was venting his adrenaline through aggressively thumping inanimate objects. I snuck a glance at Minho, checking for any signs of repentance, but he was grinning like a lunatic in a padded cell, so I rolled my eyes at Clint instead. He leaned across a purple beanbag and whispered:

"I think we broke Frankie…"

He was right. The short blond boy was rocking backwards and forwards on his heels, muttering _'goawaygoawaygoaway'_ under his breath and twisting his fingers, his blue eyes darting around the room like a cornered animal. _Wow_.

"Yeesh. Remind me to never get on Minho's bad side…"

Clint laughed softly, about to answer, but Newt tapped my arm suddenly and I turned to face him. Uh-oh. The sheepish look was back.

"Hey, Lil... I'm, er, sorry about last night. I mean-" He gave an uncomfortable laugh, "Ya' asked me one question and I basically projectile vomited my whole bloody life story at ya'. That wasn't fair - I probably shouldn't have – it's not ya' typical bedtime story – I mean, I should probably be in a mental hospital or therapy or somethin' – um… yeah, I'm sorry about that."

I started; more than a little surprised that he'd actually thought I'd be upset about it. Of course, it had bothered me - it still makes me deliriously angry now, eight years later, and that's putting it mildly. Nobody should have to go through all of the crap that my N did - god, _any_ of the crap that my N did - and I'm not sure there was a _right_ way of reacting to it. But I think, that next morning, the only emotion he appeared to be feeling towards it was extreme embarrassment for some reason, and I was trying desperately to string together some words that would both reassure him and dissolve the sheep that had taken up residence on his face.

"Oh no, honestly N, I didn't mind... um, beautiful metaphor by the way."

He snorted and looked relieved. "Thanks - I try."

And with a flash of his typical crooked grin, we resumed our usual routine, sitting next to each other, watching the mishmash of individuals painting their hundreds of personalities across W.I.C.K.E.D's uniform space – not talking, not worrying, not really even sitting in silence. Just being.

"…Hey, Newton?"

"Mmmm?"

"D'you need _help_ with that Pop-Tart or...?"

Silence. Then a smile.

"Push off, Pasteur."

* * *

**7:30**

When the last of the neon pastries had been demolished and the level of noise in the Canteen was rising without the distraction of food, Ava Paige stepped into the centre of the room and screamed her usual greeting:

"EVERYONE! _KIDS! _Thank you. Now, I hope you've all eaten up 'cause today's task is a big one. As I think you all heard on the alarm system this morning, Sub-Station One opens today."

Anxious murmuring broke out amongst the groups.

"If you all stop _talking_, then I can tell you what it is, can't I? Sub-Station One is the first of our many SimPrep stations which you will all become _exceedingly _familiar with over the next year or so here at W.I.C.K.E.D. The substations will prepare you both for your assessments in the Simulation Stations and, for a select group of you, the Trials themselves."

Her speech continued as we were lead out of the canteen in our Groups and squashed into yet another mega-elevator.

"The Sub-Stations – of which there are roughly twenty – each specialise in a different threat that you may face in the Trials. Sub-Station One focuses on ground conditions, for example: mud and quicksand. Today, you will be taught how to deal with these two conditions, be given an opportunity to practice and then placed under test conditions in a Simulation Station. Now, do not panic; you will be in no danger – a group of teachers will be on hand should you require rescuing. You will, however, be expected to use your initiative and help will only be offered in _extreme_ circumstances."

The gaggle of subjects exchanged apprehensive glances as each group was herded in silence through a different sliding door into chamber-like rooms, this cheerful assurance ringing in our ears. Just in case we still hadn't grasped where we were going (they never valued our intelligence that highly at W.I.C.K.E.D), a fluorescent sign flickered above the door:

"**SS1: SURFACE TRAINING #1"**

Our room was windowless, lit only by strips of glaring daylight bulbs that were slowly burning holes into our retinas, and set into the patterned-metal flooring was a pair of enormous trap doors that covered almost two thirds of the chamber, each marked with the numbers one or two followed by a complex code that might as well have been hieroglyphics for all we could understand. Two men were standing in front of them, one was young with a black floppy fringe, dressed in navy training gear, and the other looked about fifty-seven, with thick grey hair, a slim W-Tablet in his hand and in a pristine suit. But it was the threatening display covering the entirety of the far wall that caught everyone's attention. It was a weapons rack – but not just a wooden board with a couple of knives strapped on – oh no, I'm talking bows, swords, nets, daggers, rifles, clubs, katanas, javelins, spears, darts, slingshots; anything you can think of was up on that wall. I couldn't help but flash back to Black's pitch to me, something that seemed a lifetime ago, and think: _What 'harmless test' could ever require so much weaponry? What the heck are we __fighting__?_

"Is it just me, or does this look exactly like that totally badass scene in Star Wars?"

Jackson's voice drifted across from the boy's line, breaking the stunned silence and earning a few nervous giggles from the subjects around him. Ava Paige allowed herself a small smile at his comment and walked across to stand opposite us with the two men.

"Er - no, Jackson – And we sincerely hope that these rooms will gradually help you become warriors yourselves. In a few minutes I will leave you in the capable hands of your instructors, so without further ado, here is the man that can help you become a 'badass': Mr Colby Austin!"

The younger man stepped forwards with a glittering smile and a friendly wave – now that he was closer, I could see an old silver scar snaking its way from his temple to his left ear, cutting through one of his eyebrows: "Hi, guys!"

"Mr Austin will be your trainer for the majority of your Station Tasks – if you have any problems regarding your training, your general state of mind, or want any extra sessions, you report to him. His door – and mine – is always open. However, anyone found abusing their relationship with their trainer through disrespect or otherwise, will be severely punished. Now, remember what I told you – try your best today. Don't panic."

And with that, Ava Paige vanished out of the sliding doors and back up to her office. Karly leaned over and whispered with a smirk:

"That guy is _seriously hot_ – I may have to report to him pretty often…"

"_Karl_!" I rolled my eyes at her, disapproving though not disagreeing as Colby watched Ava Paige leave before turning back to us and flashing another smile.

"Okay everyone, formalities first: I'm Colby Austin, I'm twenty-five and I'm gonna be your Trials Trainer for the foreseeable future, but –as long as nobody snitches to Ava – let's just drop Mr Austin right now 'cause frankly, it makes me feel older than I do looking at you lot. Colby'll do just fine."

He had a strong New York accent that reminded me, with a pang, of my Dad's. Colby pointed across to the suited man behind him.

"This is Andreas Maddox, our expert SimPrep technician, so if you see him pottering around, don't worry, he's just making sure that ya'll don't get electrocuted – we are gonna call him Mr Maddox though, because he really is old."

Mr Maddox chuckled, raising an eyebrow and mimed aiming his W-Tablet at the back of Colby's head, getting a laugh from the assembled subjects. Colby just looked behind him and shook his head wearily – it was obviously an ongoing joke – before stepping up to one of the trapdoors to continue his intro:

"Okay, that's pretty much formalities over – please don't try and tell me your names, 'cause I'm not gonna remember them until you're all at least twenty, and I don't want to offend any more of you than I will in your Report tomorrow. So, minimising that – this is the first part of your training." He grinned, "Surface testing: the boring but necessary lesson for everyone planning on going outside this century. Now, we're gonna start y'all off easy – this door I'm standing on is the mud door; nasty mixture of turf, slush and hard earth and the one after that is sand. There's a 99.9% chance that you're gonna have to run across these kinds of ground for at least half of your time in the Trials, so you better be good at it. But, talking to Mr Mathewson, yesterday though-"

Everyone groaned at the mention of the psycho Sports teacher with the lung capacity of a whale.

"-you're all completely useless at running on _flat concrete_, so I've got my work cut out, ain't I?"

Running a hand through his black hair with a joking sigh, Colby made a signal to Mr Maddox, whose fingers immediately started tapping at the W-Tablet. The trapdoors that Colby was standing on started to creak apart, and the instructor neatly jumped up into the air, landing lightly on the newly simulated surface underneath, his gleaming white trainers sinking a good five centimetres into the mud. He grimaced, gesturing to his feet:

"And Exhibit A: the primary issue with mud. You sink. Fast. In the Trials, none of you are going to have time to stop and extract your various limbs from the mud – those few seconds are the difference between passing and failing. So, the Number One Rule with mud is to look for the hard spots."

Colby skipped forward two steps to demonstrate, onto a spot that looked identical to the one he had just sunk in, but it held firm, supporting his weight.

"This can be kinda difficult – particularly for Newbies like you pack and particularly when you're running full pelt – but usually, once you've found a hard spot, that tends to be linked to another and another, and you can find your way pretty easy. Hard spots have a crunchier texture; like baked bread, but beware the spots with a scaly texture, that'll be a Crust Spot. They harden eventually, but like that, they're an ice-rink that's only just frozen over – can be lethal if you waste your time falling in a big one. Hard mud is more likely to have some wilting turf on it too: there's not enough water in the soil to support life for long."

Picking up a cane, he pointed at a clump of yellowing grass, bending slightly, like an old hairbrush, then towards a lizard-textured patch closer to us. He promptly raised the cane and smashed it into the dirt, shattering the fragile crust and letting the thick mud come oozing up out of the cracks.

"You step in one of those in the wrong way and you can be in it up to your knees, so make sure ya'll pay attention."

We nodded mutely as Mr Maddox entered another command into the system, sending the second set of doors sliding away and revealing what appeared to be a giant sandpit. I stared at the pile, waiting for a huge sinkhole to open up and suck all the sand in like water in a bath, so I was surprised and mildly disappointed when the sand remained stubbornly in pile formation. Somebody in the girls' line obviously thought the same thing:

"I don't get it – where's the quicksand?"

"Aha!" Colby stepped out of the mud pit, wiping his feet on the rubber mat between the two and striding over to the second one. "Elementary, my dear Watson! You see, that question, right there is what could get you kill - badly injured in the Trials-"

Newt tapped my shoulder and mouthed "_Killed?!" _I shook my head – I'd caught the chilling mistake too, but it had to have been a slip. "_He's just dramatic." _Well, I hoped so, anyway.

"-and I am going to teach you right now how to work it out. This part is the quicksand."

He waved his cane at a large sandy bit that looked completely identical to the sandy bits on all sides of it. There were murmurs of confusion rising from the crowd before Colby placed his finger on his lips.

"Shh. Thank you. As you have all worked out, quicksand is almost identical to any normal patches of sand and that is why it will be such a danger to you in the Trials. Quicksand _is _just normal sand, but with an underlying water source or some kind of a river deep under it, and then a couple of tiny streams leading up to the surface. The smaller area between those two streams is usually quicksand. So, as it's formed with water, quicksand almost always has ripples on the surface. Come closer guys, come and check it out."

Somewhat reluctantly, we shuffled closer. There were indeed tiny ripples on the surface of the sand, like the little wavy lines that children draw as grass, 'cause they never have the time or attention span to colour it in.

"So look out for those – now you know about them, they're pretty obvious. Second, if you're in a sandy area try to walk along with a stick and tap the ground hard every couple of metres, just to check you're on a safe track. For example, here-"

Colby stepped onto the sand closest to the edge of the pit and tapped it with his cane. It sank maybe two centimetres, but then hit the harder packed ground below.

"It's solid – safe to run on. But _here_-"

He stretched the cane out further and plunged it into the rippled sand. It sank right up to the metal ball on its top, almost pulling Colby over with it.

"-just three metres away, it's not. D'ya see how quickly that happened? Best case scenario, it can take hours to get somebody out of quicksand safely, and in the Trials you're gonna be lucky if they give you _minutes _let alone hours. Worst case scenario, you try to drag 'em out wrong and they sink or you break their bones – and in the Trials you can't afford to leave a person behind. So ya'll might laugh at these classes – and you're gonna have a lot of 'em – but it is _so _important that ya'll get this, okay?"

"Okay!"

"Um..uh-huh"

"Yep…"

"Great!" Colby answered the chorus of patchy responses with a dazzling grin. "Now who wants to go first?"

* * *

We spent the next two hours being bombarded with three textbooksful of information through a mishmash of careful task analysis, Colby's Bear Grylls-esque manner of teaching and pure messed-up trial and error. As usual, the ability range across the group was impressive – Nick and Alby threw themselves into it in seconds, loving the reckless abandon of the task, whereas others like Gally and Sonya were far more wary, dipping their toes into the surfaces the way you would a scalding hot bath. Poor Newt with his sprained ankle had been relegated to a bench on the edge of the room with a W-Tablet to film the lesson (which he spent the entirety of zooming in on Clint as he toppled over every surface that Mr Maddox simulated like a slightly drunk Bambi on ice – "_for the love Clint, it's a miracle you can bloody walk!" "Oh ho and you're the expert, Newton?"_). Then again, I wasn't exactly doing much better – I played it safe and copied Colby as he repeatedly drowned then rescued a battered looking crash-test dummy from the quicksand, demonstrating what gets you plated in silicon dioxide and what saves you precious seconds (and fingers) in the Trials.

When 10 o'clock finally rolled around and Colby called:

"Good work, guys – Clean up, go have lunch! I'll meet you in the Simulation Station at 12:00 for your test! Move on out!"

It didn't matter how well you'd done; nobody was exactly thrilled about doing it all again, and as an _exam_ this time. _Ugh… _by this point, I was covered in bruises, mud, there was a small desert-worth of sand matted into my ponytail and I was quickly realising that all of the tasks that W.I.C.K.E.D devised for us had the nasty side effect of extreme exhaustion, but I was no match for Clint. His dark hair was almost brown with mud and sand; there were small cuts all over his shirt and across his skin. He stumbled over to us, as we shed our uniforms in the changing-rooms, picking tiny grains of sand out of his mouth and eyes. I yanked up a wet wipe from the dispenser and gently dabbed at his face, catching the last smudges and making him laugh:

"Ach, thanks Ma!"

"You're welcome, Bambi."

"Hey!" He batted my hands away with a grin.

"Seriously though," Newt slung an arm around Clint's shoulders (an interesting balancing act with N's crutches), "Ya' sure can actually stay alive later, man?"

We all looked up at Clint and raised teasing eyebrows. He sighed impatiently, pulling his Lycra shirt over his head, his brogue muffled by the material:

"Ach, don't worry, you muppets, I got this!"

Honestly, even then I didn't believe him, but I definitely didn't realise just how wrong he was going to be…

* * *

**Hi everyone!**

**I'm back! *hides behind the stack of terrible chapter drafts building up in my bedroom* Okay firstly, I am really really sorry about the delay between this chapter and the last one, I am aware that it's been over 8 months and that is a horrible thing to do to readers who are so lovely to me - it is 25% a result of my title as Queen of Procrastination and 75% to do with the INCREDIBLY important exams that I have to sit in a couple of months and I have been doing so much revision and coursework lately that 'stressed' and 'tired' have just become part of my personality. (Warning you now, I still have to revise for those, so updates are going to be a bit sporadic, just hopefully not as sporadic as Ch11 and Ch12!) **

**Those aren't good enough excuses though and I just want to say a HUGE thank you to every one of you that is still reading this story after my neglect and a special virtual hug for everyone that has PM'd me or reviewed Isaac Newton's Girl over the past few months :) This chapter is for you guys, because you are the reason that I actually got up earlier and stayed up later to carry on with this story and renewed my passion for it :) Thank you millions - I know I'm waffling, but those messages actually meant the world to me and some of the things that people have told me on here have probably been some of the nicest things I've ever been told in my life! :) I really love the TMR fandom so much :)**

**I know this chapter is by no means my best - for some reason it's been really difficult to write - but please let me know what you think! :)**

**See you soon! (12 days 'till Christmas!)**

**Star* x**


	13. 13 - Codes, Klutzes and Too Many Crushes

_**I do not own TMR - The world/characters/ plot of Maze Runner belongs to James Dashner! – No copyright infringement is intended!**_

* * *

**Chapter 13 – Codes, Klutzes and Way Too Many Crushes**

At 12:15, after a mountain of suspiciously crunchy sandwiches had been destroyed, the first forty subjects had collected outside the revolving doors of the W.I.C.K.E.D Centre, waiting for further instructions from Colby. Normally, waiting outside wasn't an issue for us, but today it was 'colder than a penguin's pyjamas', as my Dad used to say, and even the youngest kids were afraid to splash in the puddles in case they stuck to them; ice figures on the frosted sidewalk. I came to W.I.C.K.E.D from Southern USA so I was 95% convinced that my fingers were about to fall off – _how could anywhere be so __cold_ _after the Sun Flares? _With a shudder, I shuffled across to Newt, who was lounging against the nearest wall wearing a _short-sleeved shirt _and a mocking smile as I scrambled up next to him.

"Somethin' wrong with ya', Piccalilli?"

He feigned confusion, gesturing towards my scarf and the embarrassingly pink bobble hat that I wasn't planning on taking off my head for at least three more hours. Treating him to my most attractive, under-the-eyebrows scowl; I pressed an ice-cold hand against his bare forearm which – to my great satisfaction – made him yelp and swing out of my reach as I answered:

"Nope – I'm just slowly contracting hypothermia, but no worries… and what are you anyway, some kind of snake?"

"Lizard." Newt corrected, "And nah – I grew up in Britain, Princess, I've basically evolved to survive in an igloo in a torrential downpour. Nice hat, by the way."

"Thanks. Now shut up and stop flaunting your cold-blooded superpowers, Backstreet Boy."

I shivered violently to emphasise my point, and Newt's expression slid from teasing to worried. He dragged himself clumsily across the pristine wall on his crutches to look more closely at me.

"Hey… you're shaking… oh, for the love, just come over here."

With far too little warning, he wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me into him (which in no way helped the goosebumps that covered my arms, despite the sudden temperature increase). I remember thinking he smelled of vanilla, which made absolutely no sense because the soap in our bedrooms was lavender scented. Newt rolled his eyes as I shivered again, but not from the cold– _honestly, what is wrong with me?_

"Better, Lil?"

"Um, yeah. Thanks."

"No problem – can't have that pretty little nose freezin' off, can we? Plus, you're gonna need it to sniff out all of Axel's impending bullshit later."

Axel was a wonderful individual that the group of us had become acquainted with over the past few days. A fitness obsessed Californian, whose many talents involved grunting, punching passers-by and generally regressing the human race by about two thousand years. He'd been the Neanderthal that had caused Gally and Newt's blue chair massacre on the first evening, and so far, the boys had yet to refer to Axel without the words 'prat' or 'bullshit' in the same sentence. Unfortunately, this opinion of him – though very widely accepted – hadn't spread to all of the subjects and he'd managed to gather a group of cronies around him with a similar number of brain cells.

"Ugh," I groaned, "I cannot wait. I swear I'm always exactly three seconds away from telling him to push off."

"Well, if he ended up in my group, I'd be tellin' him to push off over a bloody cliff…"

"N!"

"What?" His shoulders were shuddering with laughter, "I'd be sneaky about it, promise – the cops'd never get me!"

I shook my head disapprovingly, but didn't get chance to find out the rest of N's master plan to take out Axel, because Ava Paige, Colby and Mr Maddox came around the corner carrying a series of multicoloured wristbands and ten strange antenna-like devices. The group, as we always did, fell silent as they approached and took their place in front of us. Colby looked down at the shivering subjects and gave us a fleeting smile, but it didn't escape my notice that all of them looked slightly nervous – an observation that did not make me feel any more optimistic about the coming hours.

"Good afternoon, kids!" Ava Paige treated us to a slight variation on her typical opener, "Thanks for arriving so promptly! I trust you're all as excited about the Simulation as I am?"

The silence that greeted her words, ringing with a distinct lack of excitement, answered her question.

"Ah. Well, don't worry; I'm sure you'll enjoy yourselves. Now, as you've all noticed, the temperature out here's not great for July, so we're going to get started right away – follow me please."

She strode off towards a small black door embedded in the brick wall opposite, unlocked it with a tiny brass key about the size of my little finger and disappeared through the opening, her next few words floating back to us:

"And, believe me, getting lost down here is worse that getting Cut so KEEP UP!"

We kept up.

* * *

Behind the opening was a short (luckily for Newt), winding set of stairs that led into yet another chamber, leaving me to wonder if that's all this place was, chamber upon chamber, filled with different 'tasks' and linked with a myriad of corridors, jumbo-elevators and staircases that belong in fairytales. Weirdly, the room's light was provided by a single gas lamp that hung on a chain from the ceiling. Colby – who was carrying the wristbands – squeezed out to the front:

"Okay, guys, so for this task, we're gonna need to split ya'll into groups, so shut up and listen to me. When I call your name come and get a wristband – don't mess around sorting out teams now; we'll do that when we get downstairs. So, Yellow Group: Karly, Harriet, Jackson and Minho, Red Group: Alby, Dmitri, Sonya and Zart, Green Group: Clint, Mariella, Axel and Sam."

We all groaned in sympathy with Clint – nobody's afternoon was going to be fun, but between Mariella's screaming over broken nails, Sam and Axel's general boneheadedness and Clint's own balance issues when it came to quicksand, it didn't really look like his afternoon could get any worse. Colby rattled through the list, calling out the names amid whoops and moans and many barks of "No, you _cannot_ swap teams, they have been _specifically engineered_" as people identified their teammates. Eventually he got down to:

"And Blue Group: Gally, Nick, Lilianne and Borro. Isaac, you can go with Mr Maddox in a second to take the test electronically. Now everyone, step over to Ava –er, Ms Paige – and she will hand out your precaution gear."

As I went up to collect the blue wristband, someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was Gally, with a terrific shiner blooming underneath his left eye, a nasty remnant of yesterday's test. I smiled at him as I stepped back into the crowd, and he flashed me a huge toothy grin, although with a bruise like that, it must have hurt him – the automaton appeared to have left his optimism undamaged, anyway. _I like this kid. _ Nick and Borro I didn't know very well, but I recognised them as two of the older boys who had aced the lesson that morning, so that was a relief. The 'precaution gear' turned out to be forty blindfolds, made of a thick polyester material, which we were all issued with and forced to put on before we continued down the stairs (and I quote '_for our own safety')_. Minho was less than impressed:

"What the hell?! We have to go down three hundred stairs with freakin' _blindfolds on?_ Do you people want us to break our necks?" He waved his arms around, "I mean, Newt's got a snowballs' chance in the Scorch of getting down those stairs without killing himself!"

N snorted, "Thanks a lot, Min."

"You're on crutches dude, you're welcome."

Ava Paige coughed awkwardly – obviously a nervous trait of hers – and placed a hand on Minho's shoulder which he quickly shrugged off. "As I said, it is for your own safety. Don't worry Mr Park, there are less than three hundred and we have a system in place for such situations-"

"Oh thank goodness, _a_ _system_; we're saved-"

"Unless you wish to return to the compound and have a discussion with Chancellor Michael, Mr Park, you may wish to keep the sarcasm to a minimum."

Minho fell silent, but continued to glare up at Ava Paige from under his eyebrows.

"Following the protocol everyone, I need you all to put on the blindfolds. Thank you. Now take the hand of somebody next to you – Oh, for goodness sake IT DOESN'T MATTER WHO IT IS. Mr Newton, go with Mr Maddox and put the blindfold on as soon as you leave this room, he will take you to the ETesting classroom."

I heard a door open and close to the left before Ava Paige carried on.

"Keeping hold of the person behind you – Mr Flamel (that was Nick), you are at the front and the steps are about three feet ahead of you. Be careful. There are exactly two hundred and thirty two steps, not including this floor, so make sure you are counting as you go down, placing your free hand on the handrail to the left. When – and only when – you reach the bottom, you may remove your blindfolds and sort yourselves into your groups, ready for the distribution of the equipment you will need for the task. Off you go – Mr Austin and I will meet you at the base of the stairs."

And off we went. _One, two, three, four, five, six…_While it didn't turn out to be the death-trap that Minho was envisioning, I can't say it was a pleasant experience. _Forty-two, forty-three, forty-four, forty-five, forty-six… _Even with the blindfold on, we could tell the stairwell was pitch black and faint voices of W.I.C.K.E.D operatives came floating through the walls every so often from nearby chambers, which was more than a little unsettling. It was starting to feel like the set of a bad medieval horror movie. _Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred…_The subjects kept up an unusual level of silence in the dark, everyone's attention focused on counting the steps, nobody keen to go careening down the hundred and whatever number of stairs that we had left – it was only broken by the occasional shout of "Hey! Stop pushing!" as somebody fell out of the rhythm of the others. _Two hundred and four, two hundred and five, two hundred and six, two hundred and seven... _ In the end, the pattern of the eighty feet on the stone and the monotony of the numbers was actually quite relaxing, in a strange hypnotic kind of way, so that when we did reach the bottom, I had to wake myself up a little to undo the knot at the back of my head. _Two hundred and twenty-nine, two hundred and thirty, two hundred and thirty-one, two hundred and thirty-two!_

"Well that's me done for the day!" Karly laughed in my ear as I fiddled with the double knot. "Minho might have to carry me!"

"But you'd hate that – it means he'd 'win'."

"Well yeah, but I'm shattered! Plus have you seen the guy's arms? Wow…"

I snorted with amusement as the blindfold finally fell away from my eyes – I couldn't keep up with that girl and Minho's 'hotness' in particular seemed to fluctuate with every word the poor guy said to her! The room we were standing in was large but relatively disappointing, considering the effort we'd exerted to get there. It was an almost featureless space, with the only obvious items in it being a large metal door with a lock bigger than Winston's head, ten different coloured circles on the furthest wall and rows upon rows of copper pegs. On the pegs of the first four rows hung pairs of grey leggings and black Lycra running shirts with subject identification numbers emblazoned across the back, similar to the uniforms we'd worn that morning. At Ava Paige's instruction, we each found our uniforms on the pegs and squashed into the tight training-gear along with pairs of black running shoes with deep ridged soles. As we dressed, a different set of pegs caught my eye, to the left of the others. They were bare, but were nailed about half a metre lower than ours, so I assumed they were for the younger children. I hadn't seen the babies of the group: Winston, Jeff, Chuck and the rest anywhere other than the Canteen since the day we were brought to the W.I.C.K.E.D Centre. They must have been trained differently in a separate part of the compound – the tasks that we were completing were too exhausting and probably almost impossible for anyone that young. I felt a pang as I looked at the smaller pegs and when I heard Karly sigh, I knew that she did too. She rubbed her forehead with her fingertips, as she always did when an unbidden thought sprang into her mind:

"I've got a little brother, you know. Alex. He's nine."

I smiled, hoping that was the right response. "I know. You told me."

"Did I? It's weird actually, he'd love this." She gave a short laugh, "All of this crazy stuff with quicksand and robots – he wants to be an astronaut or a deep sea diver. Yet I'm the one here - _me_, who literally wrote every Gym Class excuse going - and he's stuck back home, locked up in his room by my Mom. It's so _messed up_!"

"The world's messed up."

She laughed then – a real laugh. "You're right there, sister!"

"Come on guys!" Colby's voice rang out across the changing room, now sounding slightly irritated. "Before I'm fifty, would be nice! As soon as you're dressed, come and stand by the circle that matches your wristbands. Come on, now!"

The blue circle was the one nearest to the stairs and by the time I got there, Nick and Borro were already standing under it, their heads together, deep in discussion about something. Borro was tall, a muscled redhead from the Scottish Highlands with an amazing accent that took even longer to decipher than Newt's; Nick was slightly shorter, with a Harvard worthy vocabulary, a mop of dark brown curls and sea-green eyes set into a kind looking face. Both were about sixteen years old – in 2067, they were some of the oldest in the entire group. They looked up as I approached and Nick gave me a welcoming smile and called "Hi there, Lilianne!" while Borro just nodded.

When everyone had assembled underneath their designated circles, Ava Paige came along the line of people, giving each team one of the strange devices – which, now I was closer, I could see looked like a huge metal antenna attached to a small screen with protective rubber around the edges – as Colby explained the upcoming task.

"Okay, are ya'll listening? Sam, you're not 'cause I can see your mouth moving. Stop it. Thank you. Right, we're starting you guys off easy today. When you go through that door-" He gestured to the metal monster of a door to his left. "You're going to find yourselves inside the Simulation, and today it looks like a really thick forest with the occasional river, but don't be fooled. Remember this morning's lesson, or you might find yourself in deep trouble – or deep mud as the case may be. Your task is to collect eight coloured stones, each one engraved with a letter, like this."

Colby held up a small purple rock, a little smaller than a ping-pong ball. You could just about see the black 'H' that was etched into the side.

"The device you all have is called a Locator. If you use it properly, it's the difference between getting lost in the Simulation and from winning the Task –it shows the location of all the stones you haven't got yet. Exactly a mile east from your entrance – the entrance faces north - will be an identical door with a complicated automatic lock. When you get to it, you need to put all eight stones into the gaps in the door in an order that makes a word and the door will open. To get through, you need two 'N' stones and two 'G' stones, but other than that, they need to be different – the door won't open otherwise. You need to be back in this room within 90 minutes or you fail the task – keep in mind, guys, that we can impose time penalties for any stupid behaviour and that includes trying to steal stones from other teams. Five minutes to discuss, then we move out."

He shot a sharp look at Clint and Axel's team as everyone started murmuring, debating the task. Borro was nodding again, but with a smile on his face:

"This'll be easy – I'm betting forty-five minutes at the most, Nick!"

Nick didn't look so sure, biting his lip as he answered, "Perhaps that's how they want us to perceive it. Has anything here been that straightforward? I reckon every stone's going to be hidden behind a hazardous surface, or how is it anything more than a treasure hunt?"

Gally, who'd been silent up until this point, frowned, considering it, then said: "Then everyone needs to have a job to do – there's too much to think about for everyone to do all of it." As soon as he'd got the sentence out, he closed his mouth and looked across at me, unsure of his answer. "Right, Lily?"

I gave him a silent thumbs up behind Nick's back and agreed – it was true. "Yep, Gally's spot on. One of us needs to take the lead, get a stick and keep checking the surfaces – whoever did the best at spotting them this morning-"

"That'll be me." Borro decided. "I grew up in a really wooded area – I knew all of the mud trivia before Colby said it."

Nick nodded, "Yeah, this sounds like the right track. Someone at the back needs to carry the Locator, to keep informing the leader of where we're going. Lilianne, you were ingenious with those machines yesterday, could you do that?"

I coloured at the praise (although he was trying to be nice, let's be honest, '_ingenious'_ was a bit far. '_ridiculously lucky' _was closer to the truth, but I wasn't going to correct him) and answered, "Sure – call me Lily" as Gally piped up:

"Nick and I can keep an eye out for stones and try to work out the word as we're walking!"

Across the five minutes, Nick seemed to have experienced a change of heart. Now he was grinning right along with Borro.

"Actually, you might be correct, my friend – this is evidently going to be plain sailing!"

He broke off when Borro elbowed him in the ribs with a teasing smile.

"Nick?"

"Yeah?"

"Congratulations, you are the first human being to utter the words "plain sailing" since 1947– jolly good, old chap!"

"Oh, shut up."

* * *

We were the last group to enter the Simulation, much to the boy's immense irritation because after we'd got our 'divide and conquer' strategy down, we were raring to go. What Colby had said was proving to be pretty accurate. The second we closed the Simulation Door behind us, we were overwhelmed by an attack on our senses: the smell of wood and wet grass filled the air as we set off down a beaten track with the sounds of birds and rustling leaves ringing in our ears. The simulation had built a scene that, on Earth, had been almost entirely destroyed by the Sun Flares – towering trees with twisted branches that definitely belonged in a Tolkien novel surrounded us and every so often, a small insect, like a bee or a butterfly would circle us for a second, before flying back off to where it came from, with the brilliant light of the sun reflecting off its wings. It was, in short, incredible.

"How is this even possible?" Nick had breathed. "I mean, we're at least two hundred feet underground!

"It isn't." Gally stated as he rubbed some of the track dust between his fingers, "My Dad was an IT construction manager in a huge corporation – he'd have known if it was possible to build an underground world! You can create the same effect with special 4D goggles, but that's more like a hologram, you couldn't actually touch anything."

Clapping my hands, I grinned at him: "Whoa there, whiz-kid, maybe you should be the one with the Locator."

"No way! I'd just break it!"

We were distracted from the impossibility of the Simulation by the Locator suddenly whirring to life in my hands. The antenna twisted from side to side, before settling on a location and the small screen lit up with white light, showing a small blue dot in the top left hand corner with the notation **'20m NW" **next to it. Borro called down from the front:

"What does it say, Lily?"

"I'm not sure!" I called back, "We have to walk twenty metres North West, I think."

Nick worked out that if the door behind us was South, then the beaten track we were already following must be North East. I didn't like it. The fact that a road in the Simulation just happened to lead us towards the first stone seemed suspicious to me, and I could tell by the look on the boys' faces that they were thinking the same thing – Borro had torn a stick off the nearest tree and was slamming it into the ground in a semicircle every two metres. However, despite our scepticism, when we walked twenty metres along the beaten track, Nick suddenly cried:

"Down there, look!"

And dived down to a hollow left by two rocks about a foot off the path. He scrambled up, triumphant, waving two blue rocks, the colour of robin's eggs, each one clearly showing a golden "N" on the side.

"Marvellous!" Nick smiled, "What's next, Lily?"

I looked down at the Locator, confused as the display on the screen didn't change, stubbornly remaining **20m NW. **It couldn't be repeating the instruction – our North West was now a huge wall of rock, so that way was obviously out. I turned over the Locator and tapped a small glass square at the bottom of the machine, hoping this would restart it, but instead a red laser beam shone out of it and scanned the two centimetres of air in front of it before bleeping and showing: **SCANNED OBJECT NOT COMPATIBLE.** That gave me an idea.

"Wait a second – Nick, can I have those stones for a minute?"

He handed them over with a questioning glance. Turning the Locator upside down again, I passed the first stone under the glass square, letter facing upward, and then repeated the action with the second one. The Locator now gave a higher pitched bleep and the two golden 'N's flashed on the screen before disappearing to reveal an orange dot with **300m E**.

"Three hundred metres east." I told them, giving the stones back to Nick. Now it was Borro's turn to look concerned.

"East goes off the path." He frowned, "But then it's a test isn't it? We're not going to find any surfaces if we stay on this track." Using the stick, he gestured towards some dusty footprints continuing off up the path. "Looks like somebody did though."

Moving even more carefully now, we started off on what appeared to be grass, with Borro still tapping the floor with his cane. I was adjusting the Locator antenna, checking that we were still heading in the right direction and Gally's dedication to completing the task was impressive as he wheeled his head around like a baby bird, scanning for any stones that the Locator or Nick might have missed. Our unease was growing with every safe, grassy step we took, so we were actually relieved when after just over a hundred metres, Borro cried out:

"Guys stop! There's some mud up ahead."

We formed a line in front of it, all four of us studying the floor – which was indeed shifting from the soft green moss of the last stretch to a dark, almost marshy ground ahead of us. I pointed to a spot on our left.

"How about there?"

Nick studied it for a second and then shook his head. "It's not completely soft but I think that'd dissolve if all four of us walked on it."

He was right – when you leaned closer to it, you could see the telltale cracks in the surface, spreading out like veins across the mud. Borro stood on one foot, bending over the mud to tap a different patch with the stick and a look of panic crossed Nick's face: "Careful Ro! For goodness sake!"

Borro looked round, surprised, "I'm fine, Nick. I think I can stand on one leg for two seconds." He smiled back at his friend before testing the mud, first with a stick and then with the ball of his foot. It held.

"Okay, I think this is fine. Let's keep going – it's already been thirty minutes!"

I glanced at my watch and realised that it had been– a third of our time gone and we only had two stones! We picked up the pace as we followed Borro across the mud, picking our way between the scaly patches and the watery marsh as we went. We'd almost gone the remaining three hundred metres when a cry sounded from Gally, who was bringing up the rear:

"Uh, Lily?! Nick! Help! I think I'm stuck!"

I spun around, and there was Gally, up to his ankles in black mud and looking an unusual mixture of frightened, embarrassed and sorry for himself.

"I was looking for stones and I thought I saw something and then I slipped!"

Borro gave an almighty sigh as he turned and trudged back to Gally, looking as if he couldn't believe he was doing this. Nick bumped into him with his shoulder as he passed and whispered: _"He's just a kid, give him a break – not all of us grew up riding Highland Cows!"_ Borro laughed at that as he tucked an arm around Gally's shoulders. I'd torn a sharp-looking rock from the path and was scraping and bashing away the black mud at the boy's feet, as it oozed up from the surface. When I'd managed to scrape off the worst of the first layer, I nodded to Nick, who had taken up position on Gally's other side and the two older boys heaved the smaller one upwards, and - with a sucking noise that seemed impossibly loud in the stillness of the Simulation – he squelched free of it and the momentum generated from the pulling sent him catapulting into me. I caught Gally by the shoulders, only just stopping the two of us from flying backwards and he breathed a sigh of relief.

"Thank you! I'm really really sorry, everyone!"

Borro shook his head, "Your shoes are coated, mate – that's not gonna be fun when we get to a sand surface." He reprimanded, but he seemed to be smiling slightly at the younger boy's earnestness. "Now let's carry on."

Again, we did, with Gally making a squelchy-suck noise as he went along – the kind of noise that makes small children wake up from nightmares screaming. I almost couldn't believe it, when about five minutes later, a loud crash sounded from behind us, along with a shout of "_GUYS_!" and we turned to find Gally in the mud _again_, but this time in a horizontal position. That was it for Borro.

"We have fifty-five minutes to get to the door!" He yelled. "Are you having a laugh?!"

Gally looked up at us from the dirt with a sheepish expression, his whole uniform coated in sludge.

"No- I, er, slipped again, but, but look!"

He flung his arm into the base of a nearby tree and scrabbled around under it, before pulling his arm out with a wicked grin and presenting me with two small orange stones, decorated with a "G". Jumping up, he bounced around in Borro's face, his glee at having been useful painted clearly across his features.

"You see, Borro? You see, I found one, you see?"

The Scots anger seemed to give way to amusement as he ruffled Gally's hair with an expression of defeat.

"I see kiddo, you dinnae need to yell. Well done."

Gally stopped bouncing around Borro and came and jumped circles around me instead.

"Did _you_ see that, Lil?" I nodded, "Where to next?"

I laughed at the bizarre amount of energy he'd managed to summon from nothing, and I was just scanning the first stone to change the display when a scream of sheer terror ripped through the air.

* * *

**Hi everyone!**

**I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and I hope 2016 brings you happiness and everything that you are hoping to achieve :)**

**I was trying to finish this chapter for you guys before I start school again tomorrow, so I hope you like it - this chapter and the next one were supposed to be Chapter 13, but then I looked at the word count...**

**Thank you again for your amazing reviews and I'm just going to reply down here to all of the people that don't have accounts:**

**Guest: Thank you, that's really nice to hear! xx**

**Georgie: Thank you so much! :) And that's okay - it motivated me to get up and actually write! And I hope you're feeling a bit better now :) xx**

**Have a fabulous start to the year, everyone !**

**Star* x**


	14. Bullies, Bearings & Potential Boyfriends

_**I do not own TMR - The world/characters/ plot of Maze Runner belongs to James Dashner! – No copyright infringement is intended!**_

* * *

**Chapter 14 – Bullies, Bearings and Potential Boyfriends**

'_I was just scanning the first stone to change the display when a scream of sheer terror ripped through the air…'_

* * *

That scream had a strange effect upon the four of us; standing huddled in the middle of the electronic wonderland that seemed to spread out forever, mile upon impossible mile. For a moment, everything stopped – the regular noises of an aviary-full of birds, the distant crash of water rushing somewhere deep inside the Simulation, the rustle of the identical leaves on the cloned trees, even the soft sounds of our gasped breath in our ears cut out entirely – as if Nick, Borro, Gally and I were trapped inside a glitch in the technology where sound and time ceased to exist. All that was left was the scream. Echoing around our heads, bouncing off our eardrums, waiting to collide with our consciousness – and when it did, all hell broke loose.

"What in God's name was that?!" Nick gasped, as Borro whipped a bone-handled knife from his belt. Gally hit the ground immediately at the noise, his hands over his ears. A muffled crashing sound followed it, like several people running, but whatever it was seemed to be moving away from us. I reached down and pulled Gally to his feet, keeping hold of his hand and looked towards the boys.

"That was one of the others. We need to check it out."

Borro stared at me like I'd just acquired an additional head.

"Are you insane? We have no idea what's going on over there, and whoever that was has a team whose job is to keep them safe – _we, _on the other hand, have fifty minutes to reach the door. They'll be fine; we dinnae have time to be fishing out eejits!"

He'd barely finished his sentence when another scream tore through the stillness, making everyone flinch, and I stared at him, feeling horror dance across my features.

"We can't just leave them! If _they_ thought they were fine then they wouldn't be _screaming_. It'll be easier to help with eight people!"

I tossed a desperate glance at Nick, certain that he'd back me up, but to my dismay, he too was shaking his head. He met my plea with an expression that bordered on pity.

"Ro's right, Lilianne – we don't have time. It might even be a test or something – and even if it's not, we'll only get in the way."

I couldn't believe it. Now, I might not have got out much as a kid or gone to a school for longer than five years, but I had always just assumed that this was one of those basic rules of humanity that you didn't question: when somebody is screaming, you help them. Even if you're stuck in a man-made landscape with strange stability issues, paranoid boys and a situation that may or may not be a trap. How could they be so self-centred? Was this what the Flare was doing to the world? The boys, tired of my defiance, had continued to pick their way across the mud – even though I hadn't told them the direction yet. I just stood and watched. After a couple of seconds, Nick turned round.

"Lilianne?"

"I'm not going. I'm not scanning these things until we go and find that person and you can carry on if you want – finish missing a person, I don't care – but I'm going to help."

Spinning on my heel, I jumped across the stretch of mud towards the grass, ignoring their protests and only just managed to scrabble onto the bank, sending a spray of sticky mud up into my face. The shouts were stronger on this side and they were coming from somewhere to my right. The ground looked fairly stable, which was lucky, because I didn't have time to check it.

"WHERE ARE YOU?" I called, "IT'S THE BLUE GROUP, WHERE ARE YOU?"

The screaming cut out for a second before the answering cry shot back: "OVER HERE, OVER THE STREAM – HELP, I'M SINKING, **PLEASE** HELP ME! QUICKLY, HELP ME!"

I recognised the voice. Clint. Cutting through the carbon-copy trees and leaping over branches, I scrambled clumsily in the direction of the noise. The further I went, the louder the sound of rushing water became. It wasn't long before my trainers sank a little and I was standing on a marshy riverbank, up to my waist in reeds and facing a two-metre wide, roaring stream without a bridge. _Fantastic. Now what? _

"CLINT, IT'S LILY! HOLD ON! STAY AS STILL AS YOU CAN!"

I tried to throw some advice at the boy, whilst desperately searching for a next move myself. As I seemed stuck at a midget 5'2, there was no way I could jump the stream, despite the adrenaline that was coursing through my veins. The only rocks in the river were half submerged, so stepping-stones were out. There wasn't even an overhanging piece of turf to make the jump shorter. I was just about to scream with frustration myself, – _Colby said a person in quicksand could sink in minutes if they moved the wrong way, what was happening to Clint? _– when I heard running footsteps behind me. A panicked-looking Gally emerged from the copse of trees, followed by a disgruntled-looking Nick and a cursing Borro. A strange mixture of relief and anger flooded through me at the sight of them. I bit back the scathing remarks that the anger conjured and tried to focus on the issue at hand, limiting myself to a simple:

"Well, it's about time. We need to get over there, it's Clint – does anyone have any ideas?"

Borro flashed one final black look at me before scanning the immediate area. His gaze caught on a pile of driftwood about three metres to our right.

"Well, you can't mention time, Lilianne, since you've wasted so much of it, but if we could lift enough of that timber and throw it over the river, we could probably cross it. C'mon, Nick. You two find the narrowest section."

They ran towards the pile, leaving me and Gally to survey the river. If you looked closely, there was a section of the opposite bank that had a collection of rocks wedged into it, meaning the water hadn't leached into the turf – the boards wouldn't sink there.

It took us about six minutes to construct a functional bridge and my increasing worry was beginning to filter into the others – Nick's grey eyes were darting towards the distant sand even more frequently than mine. As I took hold of Borro's hand for balance on the boards I gave the boy a ghost of a smile.

"Borro?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for coming back. I couldn't have crossed this alone."

He sighed then and gestured to the other two boys, "Nah, Lilianne – it was Nick and Gally that wanted to turn round. I was outnumbered." But I didn't think he meant it. We leaped off the boards on the other side and started to run towards the patch of sand. "Now come on then, kid, let's go rescue your eejit."

* * *

By the time we finally reached the quicksand, I was terrified. The screaming had ceased while we were crossing the river and my brain was providing an array of morbidly colourful explanations for the silence. It wasn't actually a very big patch, about three metres wide, so it looked like only Clint could ever have managed to fall in. The boy was smack bang in the middle of it, up to his waist in silicon dioxide and he called out another feeble sounding "_Help!" _as we jogged into his eyeline, but it was obvious he was petrified of moving and sinking further. He was taking Colby's advice and staying as still as he could, but I could see him trembling from here. There was no sign of the rest of the Green group.

"Clint!" I pulled out the pole of the locator and started to make my way towards him, tapping at the earth, but I could only come within about two metres of him before the tip sank into the ground. Nick moved a bit closer, hovering behind me; giving Clint the best smile he could muster and said:

"Don't worry – quicksand isn't like you see in films. People have only ever died if the tide comes in, if they get hypothermia or if they panic and sink over their head. None of that's about to happen to you, Clinton, okay? Nod at me please, so I know you're understanding."

This reassurance had only slightly dimmed the panic etched into Clint's face, but he managed to nod and stutter:

"No – I – I hear you. I get it."

"Good. Okay, so this is going to sound absurd but I need you to lie back onto the sand-"

"What?!" Clint looked like he had no intention of doing anything of the sort. His eyes flicked towards me, pleading. "No! I'll sink – that won't work – Lily, tell them – I-"

I bit my lip and whispered to Borro, "Realistically, how long do we have to get him out?"

"Ach, I don't know – ten minutes, fifteen if we wanna push it."

"Right." I gripped Nick's shoulder and stretched out a little further towards Clint. "Clint? Lean backwards – it'll free your legs. We can find a stick and use it to drag you out. Trust me, okay?"

As usual, my reassurance techniques were limited to cliché and ridiculous. Nobody ever trusted someone who said 'trust me', but I had neither the energy nor enough functioning brain cells to come up with anything better. Either way, Clint registered my words and bent himself back until he was lying flat on the sand. A look of alarm flashed across his face as his head hit the ground and he closed his eyes for a second before calling out:

"What now?"

Nick turned again towards Borro and Gally. "Can any of you see a stick we could use? We need to put something under his back."

They couldn't. The problem was, as complex as the Simulation appeared to be, it was computer-generated and the sand section had only been programmed with thin, wispy sticks that you couldn't even toast a marshmallow on. It was me that suggested using the Locator. At the time it seemed like a good idea – the pole was reasonably thick, at least four or five centimetres wide and it extended about 1.5m out. I unstrapped the Locator from my belt – the display now showing **300m SW **-and, following Nick's instructions, stretched the pole out to Clint, sliding it under his back, level with his hip-bones. After seven excruciating minutes, involving a lot of yelling, cursing and painstakingly small movements, I managed to get the boy to the edge of the quicksand.

"Okay, this is the tricky part: you need to twist off the pole Clinton, but you need to twist towards Lilianne or you're going to fall right back in and we dinnae have time to save you. Are you hearing me?" Clint nodded, for what must've been the fiftieth time. "Great. Lilianne – you need to pull the pole out at the same moment. Ready? One… two… three!"

Clint threw himself off the pole, pitching sand in every direction, making me screw my eyes shut against the spray, when something suddenly caught in the Simulated Surface and the Locator tugged out of my hands. I felt myself jolted forwards and a strangled shriek of fright escaped me before Nick grabbed the back of my shirt, trying to catch the Locator, but it had been wrenched a good metre out of our reach. All we could do was watch as our only navigation tool sank into the shifting surface. For a moment nobody spoke, all five gazes fixed on the spot that the Locator disappeared. And then everybody did.

"What in God's name-"

"ARE YOU HAVING A LAUGH? THIS IS WHY I SAID WE WEREN'T GOING BACK!"

"Yeah? Well, maybe if you hadn't gone all know-it-all Bear Grylls on us, then maybe we'd have actually had a _plan _and _brought a stick from the other side!_"

"Ach, I'm sorry everyone – I'm really sorry, but perhaps we could-"

"_Bear Grylls?_ You were the one that just took off like a drunken Road-Runner – if you hadn't been such a bampot then maybe I'd have thought of it!"

"Guys-"

"Like '_bampot_'s even a word – you just made that u-"

"WOULD EVERYBODY JUST **BE QUIET?!**"

Gally. He'd pushed forward to stand in the middle of the group, hands on hips, looking a lot older than his thirteen years. He seemed surprised at first that everybody _had_ shut up but quickly recovered himself, fixing each of us with an accusing stare. "It doesn't _matter_ what we might have done – we didn't do it. Borro – you're the one who keeps going on about minutes and now we only have thirty-five, so let's do something with them – we still have four stones to find! Lily, did the Locator say which way we have to go before you dropped it?"

"Yes – 300m South West, so back towards those trees."

"There we go then." Gally nodded and, before anyone else could comment, strode off in the direction of the wood.

For a moment nobody spoke, all four gazes fixed on the small boy trekking away from us. Then Nick started to laugh:

"Well, that's us told. We better follow the Captain!"

* * *

As we hiked in a direction that we hoped was South West, I turned back to Clint, whose breathing had evened out, though his face was still couple of shades lighter than usual.

"Are you okay?"

"What? Ach, yeah, I'm okay – just remind me to scrape my pride off the floor when we get back…"

I laughed and he covered his face with his hands. "I told you I'd mess it up."

"Actually, your exact words were "_don't worry, you muppets, I got this_", so I'm never going to trust you ever again, but hey! Anyway – Newt twisted his ankle tripping over on a flat roof last night and almost fell through a window, so you're not exactly alone."

"No, guess not. It felt like it though. Thanks for fishing me out."

"'S okay." His words reminded me just how alone he'd been when we got there. "What happened to your team?"

He laughed this time, but humourlessly. "Oh, they buggered off the second they saw I'd fallen. Mariella would've come back, I think, she sort of dithered a bit when the other two legged it, but Axel just flipped me off and left – and Sam doesn't have enough brain cells to think for himself, so…"

"Prats." I muttered, realising what a satisfying word N's favourite insult was. That made Clint smile before we fell silent again, our eyes scanning the area for the next two stones.

To his delight, it was Gally that found them, wedged into the mud in the middle of our path. One was a black "C" etched into a deep ruby coloured stone, the other a white "A" in an ebony stone. Borro voiced what we were all thinking:

"Well, now what? We cannae scan them, cause we don't have a Locator, and this place is probably bigger than Narnia-"

"Aww, you watched Narnia, Ro?" Nick broke in with a smirk.

"Shut up, Flamel, like you didn't. Point is we don't know where we're going now. The other two stones – and the door, for that matter – could literally be anywhere."

Clint was frowning and he suddenly stepped forward with his hands up. "Wait a second, everyone. I was talking to Mariella earlier, and we thought there was something weird about the areas with the stones. I'm not sure I can explain it, but the noise is different, like, staticky and the air seems shiny – oh, I don't know, but if I'm not imagining it, maybe we could look for places like that..."

He trailed off, unsure, keen to help, yet not wanting to take up any more of our time. But Nick, for once, was the one nodding. He pointed to the spot in the road that Gally had dug the stones out of.

"You know, I think he's correct. Look there – there's a sort of shimmer around us."

There was. In fact, it was so obvious that I'm not sure how we hadn't noticed it before. When you leaned closer to the spot, there was a low humming noise like a bee trapped in a glass box.

"That doesn't solve the problem though," Borro reminded us, "This place is still huge, we have twenty five minutes - we can't just wander through the forest looking for a shiny spot."

"No..." I stepped closer to one of the trees at our side, trying to gauge the distance between the simulated branches. "But none of the Locator distances have been bigger than three hundred metres. So, chances are, the last two stones and the door are probably pretty close to us. If someone could climb a tree, maybe we could spot Clint's _'shiny air'_ from up there."

"I'll do it." Nick dropped the letter-stone bag onto the floor and swung himself up onto the first branch of the nearest tree. The canopy was pretty high up, so Nick was a good twenty metres off the ground before he broke through the ceiling of leaves. Borro's face went white and he yelled up:

"Nick?! What happened to look before you leap?! Plan your steps, man, good god!"

The older boy's laugh filtered down to us through the branches: "I'm fine, Ro! I think I can climb a tree for a few seconds –_ just 'cause I never rode a Highland Cow_…hey! I can see something! It's sort of that way-"

He gestured wildly in some direction that we couldn't see, making the branches shake, before Borro yelled again:

"NICK! DO NOT LET GO OF THAT TREE!"

"Okay, I'm not! Fine, I'm approximating it's a bit further to the South, maybe South East this time… Yep, I've got it – coming down!"

To Borro's immense discomfort, Nick practically slid down the last few metres of the tree, landing in the slushy ground with a squelching thump. He looked across at his friend and smiled again at his worry. "I'm fine, Grandma – I promise I'll never do it again."

"Hmpf." Borro grunted and tossed Nick's bag back at him. "Next time I'll let you break your neck. Okay, which way are we going 'cause, as you just reminded us with that stupid lack of self-preservation, we don't have much time."

"I know, I know –it's not far. This way, next to three or four oak trees. Come on!"

Nick really wasn't kidding when he said it wasn't far. The oak trees were only about a hundred metres away, across a small stream that a previous group had already placed a log over. I spotted these stones, caught in an eddy in some reeds next to the log. One was a milky white, the other a deep green– bearing the letters 'I' and 'H'.

"We did it!" Gally yelled, punching the air. "We've got them all – now all we have to do is find the door! We did it! I told you we could!"

His moment of assertiveness seemed to have passed and I felt myself smile: "Not quite, Captain Gally, we've got no idea where the door is – and we have fifteen minutes now."

"Well, that's okay – Nick can just climb another tr-"

"Nick is not climbing any more trees." Borro was decisive. "He's far too reckless with them."

"Hey, I was perfectly adept at climbing the _last_ tree."

Clint spoke up again: "Um, guys? How about we just try that door?"

We all turned around to where Clint was pointing. In the trunk of the final oak tree – which had definitely been solid wood with a couple of electronic butterflies on it two seconds ago - was a large, panelled door, with the letters W.I.C.K.E.D printed around the edges. However, in place of a simple keyhole, there was a large metal plate in the centre, with eight hexagonal hollows beaten into it. Above the hollows, were the words "_intrabit in verbo: transuerso". _

"What does that mean?" Gally wrinkled his nose. Nick just nodded and reached for the pouch on his belt:

"It's Latin – it means '_enter the word: reversal'._ I don't know about the reversal bit, but we need to unscramble the letters." He spread them out in the dust in front of us. "N –N –G-G-I-H-A-C. Well, it's doubtless an 'ing' word – that leaves H-A-G-N-C. What words come out of that?"

For a couple of minutes, we thought aloud, throwing any random suggestions into the air.

"Hag?"

"Nagging?"

"Nah – you need three 'G's"

"Could you have it with an 'H' rather than a 'G'?"

"Naghing? No way! Plus there's no 'C' in that."

"Well, it's got to be something to do with 'reversal', hasn't it? What are some synonyms?"

"Ach, yeah, okay - what's a reversal, then?"

"A switch?"

"A rewind?"

"A cancellation?"

Then it hit me. Something Newt had mentioned the night before.

"A change! A reversal is a change! That's what's happening to our lives, to the world – they're _changing!"_

Clint leaped up and started rearranging the stones. "Gordon Bennett, you're right! C-H-A-N-G-I-N-G! Changing! Quick, put them in, Gally!"

The boy looked surprised: "Me? Shouldn't Nick do it? He climbed the trees."

I'm pretty sure that if the others hadn't been trying to uphold their reputations, all four of us would have '_aaahh'_ed at his innocent expression. I scooped the stones off the ground and tipped them into Gally's hands. "No way – you found half of them, didn't you? Now, hurry up, we've only got a few minutes!"

"Oh – er – okay!" He couldn't hide the pleased grin that spread across his face. "Okay – so, C…H…A…N…G…I...N...G!"

As he slotted in the final 'G', a whirring sound started up, deep inside the oak tree, before the door swung open, revealing some steps upwards. Despite the multiple disagreements, panics, sharp words and general stressing of the last few hours, we exchanged triumphant looks and smiles. Gally gave me an awkward one-armed hug as I pushed him towards the steps. We'd finished!

* * *

**2:55 PM – The Training Room**

By the time the five of us stumbled up the top steps into the changing rooms, there were only five minutes left on the timer. The room was almost empty and the majority of the groups had already changed, handed in their equipment and crashed in the Common Room. Ava Paige came clacking over to us with an expression that was an unusual mixture of proud and disappointed (something that must have been physically quite difficult to achieve):

"Blue Group! Congratulations on completing your first test in the allocated time – there are still two teams who have yet to manage it." Her lips pressed together into a thin line then and I braced myself. "However, do you realise how expensive those pieces of equipment are? We do not give you life-saving advantages like that for you to throw them into quicksand! That Locator alone will be worth more than all of your parents' houses put together! But you paid with your mistake with time and now you are late for tea – go and change and head to the Common Room immediately. Remember, if you squandered your equipment like that in the Trials then the price could be far higher, children…"

And with that ominous warning, she swept away, leaving Colby to collect our wristbands and the stones. When he reached us, he flashed us one of his brilliant smiles. "Actually guys, one of those is only really worth a small bungalow." He laughed, "Don't let her scare you – the first test's never simple and ya'll did great. As soon as Mr Maddox dissolves the landscape, we can get the Locator back easy. And between you lot and me - I reckon that stunt with the Locator might have been Maddox's idea anyway... Clint, are ya' all right?"

When he nodded, Colby jerked his head towards the hall opposite us. "The Green group got in about fifteen minutes before you guys, but Ava's really marked them down for leaving Clint. Like I said before, you'll need everybody you can get in the Trials and there's no way you'll get through it without a solid team – you need to be able to trust each other. With the minus points the Green Group got, it puts them below the pass grade, so you did the right thing."

Giving Gally a pat on the back as he removed his wristband and walked away, the instructor called over his shoulder: "I'm real proud of y'all!"

We expected the hall to be empty when we pushed open the sliding doors, almost ready to collapse, but instead the Green Group was still in there, banging mud off their running shoes. I felt Clint stiffen next to me. They looked up at the noise; Axel caught sight of Clint and smirked – not the teasing, almost smiling, smirk that Nick or Newt typically gave, but a cold, almost cutting one.

"They didn't drown ya', eh, Clinton? Shame – they wouldn't have to waste time Cutting you. You should've just left him in there – suffocated in the grass dust!"

He started to horse laugh then – a weirdly humourless sound – and it took Sam precisely 0.2 seconds to join in and parrot the noise. Nick, behind us, muttered '_Oh, for the love of God…' _and strode across the hall, throwing his bag up on the pegs while remarking to Axel:

"Really, sand is predominantly silicon dioxide. 'Grass dust' is literally just dust."

Axel's attention was diverted at that and, like a cat with a shiny light, he found it difficult to focus on more than one person at a time. Nick had challenged him, so was therefore his newest victim.

"Oh right – '_silicon dioxide'_, eh?" Axel started to imitate Nick's uptown accent, putting on a ridiculously high voice. "What's your name, anyway, Einstein? Isn't it Nicola or something camp like that?"

Nick's back was turned against Axel and he barely turned his head to respond, though his voice had got slightly quieter. "Nick Flamel, actually. Alchemist. But Nikola Tesla was a 20th century inventor – a superlative man. Discovered the rudimentary Alternating Current."

Axel had moved a little closer to Nick now, and the smirk had slithered a few more centimetres up his face. The high voice got even more ridiculous. "Oooh, fancy – _'rudimentary'_, '_superlative'_ – that's so effing _gay,_ Flamel (only he didn't say 'effing')."

Sam's horse laugh racked up a few more notches, into whole new levels of moronic hilarity. Nick rolled his eyes, but he was beginning to look more than a little uncomfortable – both because of Axel's proximity and the turn that his words were taking. He was about to take a step backwards, when suddenly Borro was there, standing between the two boys, his hands out towards Axel and his eyes narrow.

"What did you just call him? 2014 rang - it wants its insult back. Do you have a problem with my friend or something?"

Now it was Axel that took a step back. He might have been lifting his Daddy's weights, but even at six foot, Axel had to look up at to stare Borro in the eye. His accent – like N's – was stronger now he was angry. Nick lightly touched Borro's shoulder, trying to pull him backwards, whispering. "_Ro, it's fine – he's just ignorant. Leave him alone, I'm fine._"

"No it's not bleeding _fine_, Nick, he's being an arse."

Axel had backed up a safe enough distance for him to aim another careful taunt:

"Yeah, MacDougal, listen to Nicola."

"Och, push off!" (Borro also used some slightly stronger words than this, but I'll leave those to your imagination.) He took another four steps forwards that sent Axel skittering backwards another ten. "Go flex your ego at somebody who gives a bleeding damn. Or I'll thump you from here to Glasgow."

Axel took one final look at Borro and Nick, and then at the rest of us, as if he was assessing how much getting into this fight would be worth. He obviously didn't rate his chances. After giving each of us a look blacker than pitch, he snapped his fingers at Sam and stalked out of the double doors with his crony scampering behind him. Mariella got up to leave then too, but before she opened the doors, she paused and looked back at Clint. Biting her lip she called:

"Clint? Are you okay?" He just nodded.

"I'm really sorry, I couldn-"

"Yeah, I know – It's fine, Mariella." She mirrored his nod and scurried out of the room.

The second they'd gone, Nick raised his eyebrows at Borro. "Um, unnecessary. Thank you, but, _unnecessary_." Borro just raised his eyebrows right back.

"Um, necessary. And I'll do it again if I have to." And then he was gone too.

Nick tipped his head back and sighed heavily, as I stopped to hug him by the doors.

"Thanks Nick. For stopping me drowning in mud and for coming back and for not tearing my head off over the Locator mess."

"Your welcome, Lily. You were right anyway – and Ro was doing enough head-ripping for the lot of us! "_All for one and one for all" _and all that jazz."

"Yes! I know that – Three Musketeers!"

"Got it in one." He smiled as I started to walk away. "You know, I don't think Axel's finished with us yet – nobody likes to fail, and Ro just made him look like a six-year-old. I think he'll be out to get us after today."

_And while that was true – my relationship with Axel was never unicorns and butterflies – Axel caused far more trouble for Nick Flamel than he ever did for me._

* * *

**Hiya everyone!**

**So, this was another mega chapter - I did not think this Surface test was going to take so long! It fits in bullet points in my notebook on 4 A5 sides and then I try and write it up and it turns into a novella :) I hope you guys liked this chapter - there wasn't much action, I know, but it took me a while to write and I really enjoyed developing some of the more minor characters (Nick, Axel, Borro), it was fun :) **

**Question though: I may or may not have been setting up a couple in that chapter, so virtual hugs for you guys if you can guess who it was :) Let me know!**

**Have a great half term, guys!**

**Star* xx**

**REPLYING TO REVIEWS (if I haven't already!)**

**GoldenTomato: Thank you! That's so nice - yes, I love writing humour/dialogue, but its always really hard to know if you've got it right! Well done with Clint - you're the only person that I know guessed who screamed. And I'm so glad you like Karly/don't think Lily is a Mary-Sue. That was literally my biggest fear with this story because Lily is not supposed to be perfect, nor is she supposed to be me, so I'm always really happy when somebody tells me that! :) Finally, thanks for the idea with the Newt flashback - I hadn't been planning to do one again but now you've mentioned it, I know somewhere that would work, so keep an eye out! I'm so glad you like the story and thanks for leaving such a lovely review xx**

**Viola: Yay - I'm happy you liked it! I know that bit was cheesy, but I liked it so I left it in :) Thank you! xx**

**Georgie: Thank you! Yes, she definitely is and there may or may not be a Newt chapter coming up to let you know what he's thinking about that one! Thanks for such a nice review :) xx**

**xxxxx**


	15. Dates, Discos & Unicorn Onesies

_**I do not own TMR - The world/characters/ plot of Maze Runner belongs to James Dashner! – No copyright infringement is intended!**_

**Chapter 15 –Dates, Discos and Unicorn Onesies**

After that first Test, everything at W.I.C.K.E.D started moving very fast for the group of us. The days started to melt into one, trial after trial after trial – and they did vary to an extent: we had water trials, running trials, construction trials, farming trials, cleaning trials; pretty much anything you can think of, they made us do – and before long, it seemed like we'd blinked and three months had passed. Yet, in that strange way that time has, it simultaneously felt like forever since we'd all rattled in on W.I.C.K.E.D's rusting train, confused, hopeful and a little bit frightened. Even then, we had all aged a lot more than those three months. Looking back at it now, as I write this, it feels like another life. But, after those months, while W.I.C.K.E.D could never be '_home'_ for any of us, it was starting to feel like more than a cold, featureless research facility. We were gradually getting used to our surroundings, not getting lost on the way to the Common Room and ending up in a storage cupboard, not running down the corridors with the security cameras in them, not listening to Minho when he swore blind that _'this is definitely the way to go, guys' _because we swiftly learned where _that_ would land us (never, ever, where we were trying to go, and typically in detention).

However, we hadn't escaped without considerable injury – Newt set the bar on the first night and since then, everyone had been competing to outdo him. Alby broke a finger playing football, Winston smashed into a doorframe on a bicycle, I pulled a wrist muscle and Karly broke multiple nails in a variety of tests, but the only person who actually did manage to top N's sprain was Gally, who broke his arm in two places falling out of an oak tree with Jeff.

Friendship was also something that got rigorously explored by the three hundred kids at W.I.C.K.E.D – we forged it, tested it, bent it, strengthened it and generally twisted and stretched it in every direction to see how far it would go before it snapped and you wound up with an earth-shattering fight on your hands. Everybody bickered and grumbled and had that one person that they would go out of their way to avoid being partnered with, but usually – though earth-shattering fights _definitely_ took place – everybody just got closer. Every day brought a new random piece of information about the people around us: Clint has a crippling fear of clowns, to the point that you can't even say the word 'clown' in his presence without earning a shudder, Alby can beatbox like nobody's business (a fact discovered on an unusual evening where we were left alone in the Common Room, bored, with '_ABBA: Greatest Hits'_) and Newt, to this day, is the only person I've ever met that can solve a Rubik's cube in under ten minutes whilst having a heated debate over the historical accuracy of_ Downton Abbey_. And that is truly just the tip of the iceberg. I hadn't collected the 'coolest circle of friends' – the soccer players or the beauty queens – but, god, did I love my weirdos. And yes, I am aware that I am being inherently cheesy, and everyone reading this (including myself) has been eyerolling for at least two paragraphs, but it's true. I still believe that the half an hour spent watching Gally chase Winston round the tennis courts, coated in a technicolour layer of silly string as they pretended to be a demented version of Tom and Jerry is one of the funniest half hours of my life.

But, of course, at the end of these three 'easy' months, we were presented with the gift that every high-school student in the history of the universe has come to dread. Exam season. I'm not about to lie: as a group, we were pretty pernickety – a lot of complaining went down – but the day Chancellor Michael announced that we were going to have exams, I thought the roof might split open through the sheer pressure of the outburst that ensued:

"Ughhhhh…"

"- what happens if we fail?"

"Bro, I came here to get _away _from school – is this a joke?"

"Is it optional?"

"Our _whole lives_ are a test – it's not _fair_!"

"_What!_ Oh man, I haven't read a textbook since 2057!"

"Wait, dude – you can read?"

The exams, in the end, weren't actually that bad – plus, Chancellor Michael told us they didn't count for anything except as a 'progress checker', so it wasn't the end of the world. I only pulled four all-nighters. One of the funniest things about the exams was actually watching how the others took them: I swear I didn't see Al for about three weeks – he spent the whole time holed up in the library or throwing weights around in the gym, Newt acted like the sky was going to fall in and spent at least half an hour every morning giving me a detailed list of all the reasons that he was '_absolutely, completely going to mess up these bloody things!" _, Karly, Clint and I became the proud collective owners of 357 flashcards and Minho, decided that he didn't give a flying fish about a week in and decided he could 'breeze' them. (_"I mean, my physical grades are going to take some pulling down, dude!") _We left him to it.

It was about a week after our final exam, and we were sitting in "_Knot Basics: 101_" with Miss Lockhart _– _a young, fiercely intelligent British woman from Yorkshire, who was the reason all of us could tie more knots than an obsessive Scout and had perfect Yorkshire accents by the end of our time there – when Mariella came up with 'The Ball'.

"Oooh, guys – you'll never guess what I was thinking the other day!" She grinned, looking up from her half-finished '_Fisherman's Knot'. _Karly glanced over at the boys' table on the other side of the room, where Minho, Newt, Alby and Clint were mastering twine "_Carrick Bends_".

"That Minho Park should wear an actual shirt, rather than that hideous blue excuse for a vest?"

I rolled my eyes (although that vest really was a crime to humanity) as Karly got in her third Minho joke of the day and Mariella snorted:

"Ugh, no way, he looks hot – No, I was thinking: everyone's been so stressed out lately, like, maybe we could do something fun, to help everybody relax before results day – at my old school, we used to have a prom right after exams. Obvi, we can't have a prom – _hello_, there's no nail bar in this dump – but we could have a dance, right?"

"A dance!" Sonya's head snapped up, "Oooh, we did that once back home - that would be so much fun!"

Even Karly seemed to like the idea, leaning forward, her '_Fisherman's Knot'_ discarded on the table. "Yeah – we could make it really awesome in that white hall with all the huge windows. If we had a theme, we could hang some fabrics and switch the light bulbs colours, and try and beg some food off the Canteen people."

"Ugh – maybe not…" I grimaced, remembering the rubbery eggs at breakfast. "Wouldn't it be safer to help Siggy cook everything? He'd love that – and we could have cake without the food poisoning!"

Everyone groaned and nodded, before Harriet said: "Hey, maybe we could have a Sadie Hawkins? You know, where the girls ask the guys?"

"Ugh, nooooo…" Mariella shuddered at the idea, "I don't want to make an exhibit of myself – plus, I think the task of asking _us_ out will really give the boys a chance to display their- their _emotional bravery_."

I bit back a smile as I watched Frankie (now fully recovered from the zombie incident) tying Jackson's shoelaces together under the desk- _hey, at least he was practicing knots_ \- while Edward looked on, snickering at something hilarious that Sam had carved into the table, before I caught Karly's eye, and her equally amused expression.

"Sorry to burst the bubble, Ella, but I think their '_emotional bravery'_ might be pretty well hidden somewhere under all of the testosterone and ego that's going on over there – you wanna look, be my guest, girl, but it might take a few decades!" Karl giggled.

My mind suddenly flashed back to everything that N had told me a few months ago in the hospital, half-drunk on exhaustion and embarrassment – _hmmm._ If there was a definition for whatever '_emotional bravery' _was_, _that was it. As for a dance, this was the kind of thing that six years of house arrest and cheesy chick-flicks had definitely prepared me for – I knew all about what went on at High School Proms: gorgeous dresses, mean girl gets punch poured down her front and the leads all but get married in the final scene. I was pretty sure I had this. Mariella had already got permission from Ava Paige to have the party in the main hall on Sunday – the day before results and four days from now – that gave me four days to get somebody to ask me out. _Ha! _That should really have been something that my arsenal of guy friends was useful for (I'm twenty-one, and nothing has changed – I share my house with six men), but I ran through my list of friends and came up completely blank. There was no way Karly wasn't going to collar Min, Alby stared at Harriet all through class so he _had _to ask her, Jackson had started dating Olly, Nick was basically my adopted brother, and Newt… well…_dream on_, _Lily._

As the bell rang for the end of class and we filtered out, full of excitement, sequins and ideas, I shook my head and decided that, if all else failed, I could always get Winston to take me.

* * *

**Thursday – 2:00 PM – Newt's P.O.V**

"So d'you think the Macarena counts as a dance?"

It was official. Dance-fever had taken over the whole campus. Minho was asking me about dances – _Minho._

"Um, well, yeah, but this is fancy stuff, Min, I ain't sure the Macarena's gonna cut it."

"Ugh!" He raked his hands through his hair with a dramatic sigh, "Come on, dude! I need _help_ – you're the dancer - didn't you used to do dance classes or something?"

As a matter of fact, I did – this was a detail that I had avoided mentioning to Minho until we had to pick our P.E options last month (it was that, football or wrestling – _seriously?_). Ma had put me in for classes when I was a kid, hoping I'd turn out to be the next Fred Astaire – that never happened, but, hey, I was working on Billy Elliot before the Sun Flares. Dance Class was probably the first thing my Pa cut after that; he'd never drive me there anyway. I'd missed it (another something I wasn't planning on sharing with anyone. It was better just to laugh and pretend there'd been no space left on football).

"Yeah, but I ain't sure streetdance or ballet are going to cut it either." I smirked, "The world just ended – I'm pretty certain none of the girls know how to bloody _waltz_, just spin 'em around a few times, maybe a few dips without smashin' someone's skull into the ground, and you'll be fine."

"Also," Alby interjected, crashing onto the sofa next to me with Jackson. "Don't you need a date before you start flapping about dancing?"

Minho scoffed: "Oh, that'll be easy." He flexed his muscles in a frankly horrible blue shirt he'd worn specifically to show off said muscles. "I have a queue of potential choices…"

"Ya' know they actually have to _agree_ to go with you, Park?"

Jax grinned and shot: "Well, just saying: I wouldn't be going anywhere with him in that revolting vest -where did you _find_ that?"

Minho looked mortally wounded, clasping his hands to his chest before aiming a cushion at Jackson's head.

"Does anybody _else_ want to say anything about my favourite vest?"

"Yes – it's disgusting, Min. Burn it."

I turned to see Lily in the doorway, wearing a deceptively sweet smile, with Minho's current obsession, Karly Linnaeus, at her side. Karly had been ridiculing 'The Vest' since breakfast - and Min had been trying to ask her out since about the same time. And there was _another_ situation that I had no idea how to handle - girls in general, while I was pretty sure I'd never understand them, I was getting used to living with- but asking them out? As in, would you like to attend a fancy ball with me, and please don't crush my self-esteem and say no, asking them out? The closest I'd ever come to a school dance was watching 'Grease!' and 'Harry Potter' - should I pull a Fred &amp; George and just toss a note at someone? Or was it a huge romantic gesture with flowers and a string quartet? Oh, for the love, I was out of my depth...

I met Lily's coppery eyes then and she grinned at me, rolling them at Minho's dramatics in response. I really liked Lily. This was something I had only admitted to myself recently. I really liked her. I didn't act around Lil - I mean, I'd pretty much destroyed any chance of acting 'round her with my soul pouring episode on the first night - but she didn't expect me be strong, or funny or 'Isaac Newton'ish. Whenever we were talking, the conversation never really finished, we just got interrupted by someone, or something and had to shut up. Talking to Lily was nice, it was easy, and there hadn't been a whole lot in my life that was easy.

Karly paused my wondering by sauntering over to our sofas as Minho tried to defend his vest, swinging her hips in a way that made no anatomical sense to me, with Lily following normally behind her.

"No; I shall continue to wear it in protest! None of you have any fashion sen-"

His words trailed off as Karly perched on the arm of his chair, crossing her legs over his lap and balancing with one manicured hand on his shoulder. I only just managed to stifle a laugh at his sudden change of colour and I heard Lily's soft 'Pffft' behind me. Minho didn't bother finishing his sentence as Karly ran her fingers up his arm:

"So, are you going to ask me to this thing, Superman, or not?"

_Ugh, and back to the dance._ That snapped the smirk right back onto his face, and he shifted in his chair to make sure she got the full force of it as he replied:

"Playing hard to get, gorgeous - go to the dance with me?"

Karly smacked him round the back of the head, but she had a matching grin.

"Yes, on two conditions. One: call me gorgeous again and I'll smash your teeth in, and two-"

She looked round at the rest of us and counted down on three fingers, so we all answered as one:

"Burn the vest!"

The others dissolved into laughter and I wondered how on earth it could possibly be that easy? _He just asked her, Newt, get a grip_. I looked across at Lily, who was now sitting astride my arm of the sofa, leaning against the backrest and laughing, her hair slipping out of her red scrunchie and over my shoulder. _Should I?_

"Budge up, Newton." Lily bumped into my shoulder with her ribcage (the only position she could ever manage it at), I obliged and she slid into the tiny space between me and the sofa arm. "Thanks - how's ABBA going?"

"Bloody awful. I think yesterday's downpour was my fault."

ABBA had become a running joke between the six of us and the others had decided I needed to learn to play 'Mamma Mia' on guitar to take our karaoke to new levels of terrible, but I was a bit rusty on chords and right then, it sounded a lot like a pack of cats crying. But I was so relieved to be talking about something other than the dance, I was happy to own up to it.

"Yeah, I hear Dmitri's got a blocked ear, N, you should probably apologise."

"Maybe I could carry on and unblock it."

"No, honey, I don't think making his ears _bleed_ counts."

"Hey!" I whined, leaning to one side and squashing her into the sofa. She just giggled, her eyes sparkling.

"You started it, Lizard Boy - you know you're pretty good. Seriously, though, how are you? I feel like I haven't seen you in a month."

That was true. I'd spent more time with Lily over the last three months than I'd ever spent with any girl in my life, other than Ma – mostly in snatched moments between classes, before curfew, in breaks and over meals, but still. Exam season, though, had been a wrecking ball through my fragile social skills and I'd basically been a hermit for the last two weeks. I leaned my head back onto her shoulder and sighed:

"Honestly? I'm shattered. I could sleep for a buggin' year about now – Trials, Exams, Cuts, Experiments – I try to go to sleep, and my brain just babbles on about nothing till 2AM. Also, I failed about five of those exams."

"Newt! You didn't…"

"Oh, you didn't see my maths paper – who, for the love, is Pythagorus? There were four questions on a Greek god in a bloody _maths paper_."

My head was against her neck, so I could feel her muscles shift as she smiled.

"N… Pythagorus was a mathematician, not a god! He invented the Pythagorean formula – you know, 'a2 + b2 = c2'-"

"No, no, no, no, stop!" I groaned. "I don't _actually_ want to know!"

She chuckled a bit again, before resting her head on top of mine (which for some reason, made me smile), and mumbling: "Ugh, I know what you mean though. At home, I used to read, eat, and sleep. Running up stairs was my limit – this place… this place is intense. We have to be smart and strong and independent and escape from Simulations and climb fake mountains and have friends and go to dances… and _ahhhh_… people in books make this look so easy."

_Just ask her, Newton. Just __**ask her**_. _Eight words. She's your friend. Just ask her._

"Er, Lily?"

"Mmm-hmm?"

"About that – I was wondering if-"

And then Colby Austin strode into the Common Room, looking stressed with a cry of: "Kids!"

_Ugh! _Everyone immediately rearranged themselves and sat up straight as the Trial Tutor asked:

"Sorry, guys. Can I just borrow Clinton Williams and Lilianne Pasteur for the primary kids training?" He pulled a face, "There are _so many of them_ \- Mr Maddox and I could use some back-up! We're out on the grass field."

Clint, who had been reading a book on the bay windowsill, jumped down, grabbing his coat and beckoned to Lily with a smile. She laughed and muttered, "If Jimmy's been playing tag round Colby again, I swear I'll build a naughty step", before disentangling herself from me (to my disappointment) and standing with Clint. As they turned to leave, Lily looked back at me, her face apologetic.

"Sorry, N, you were gonna say something– I'll see you later, right?"

I nodded and grinned. "Yeah, it – it wasn't important. See ya' later, Tiger-Lily - go be Mary Poppins."

They'd only been gone five minutes, and I'd just picked up my '_Survival for Beginners'_ textbook, when Benjamin stuck his head around the door, a panicked expression on his face:

"Uh, S.O.S, guys! Susan's broken four of Nick's guitar strings! He's back in twenty minutes – help! Who knows about guitars? Life and death situation here, people! We're gonna be roasted on a spit!"

Five heads swivelled to me and I shoved the textbook back into my rucksack. "I do, Benjy." Sighing, I followed him outside.

_It looked like all this dancing-whatsit was going to have to wait._

* * *

**Later 7:00 PM – Newt's P.O.V**

Bloody Hell, I was tired. I'd restrung Nick's guitar in record time, but by the time I got back to the Common Room the others had got restless and they dragged me outside for a football game, in which I got hit by the ball at least seventeen times in ninety minutes. Then, I'd had an afternoon P.E class with Jackson and Mr Aleksandrov in which I'm 98% certain I stretched muscles that I didn't even know existed and, after a dinner of tasteless slush on pasta, I was heading back through the gardens to the doom-rooms, looking forward to sleeping until the 6:00 AM alarm split my skull open. As I passed the main grass field, I heard screeching and the echoes of childish laughter filtering through the fake hedges and trees. In the centre of the field, W.I.C.K.E.D had blown up a huge, grey paddling pool, about five metres wide. Bright, plastic balls were scattered across the surface of the slightly scummy water being batted about by four or five, sleepy under-eights playing a game of 'Piggy in the Middle' as Lily watched, perched on the rim of the pool with a small chestnut-haired boy asleep on her lap. She looked mildly harassed as she balanced, stretching an arm out towards the nearest one and calling something like: _Jimmy__, come on, we've gotta go in now!"_, whilst warily trying not to fall in mid-sentence. I decided to play the knight in shining armour and jogged over.

"Hiya, Lil!"

She spun round, somewhat precariously, holding the sleeping child to her chest.

"Oh, you made me jump!"

"They left ya' to play Mommy solo?"

"No, Colby and Clint took most of the others in a while ago – I'm picking up the stragglers before someone falls asleep."

Lily seemed pretty tired herself, running a hand through her dark curls before pulling a towel over another kid's pyjamas.

"Looks like it could be you or them right now." She smiled at that, "D'ya want a hand? I can carry someone?"

"Oh, please! You're an angel, N." Standing, Lily passed me the sleeping boy – who was lighter than he looked, and couldn't have been more than six or seven. _What could W.I.C.K.E.D want with kids this young?_ – then, utilizing her free hands, she roped the remaining three out and into pyjamas and towels, pressed the button to drain the pool and scooped up a tiny blonde girl who was fast asleep behind the towel rack in a couple of swift moves. _Wow._

"Okay guys, line up!" The children scuttled into a muddled row at her words, "Back to the dorms, soldiers, let's go!"

That was obviously something they'd practiced before; sleepy as they were getting, the kids happily marched off: left-right-left through the double doors to the main block and down the corridors towards their dorms. They seemed quite happy to continue their marching with little direction, so Lily and I fell back to talking:

"Did I miss anything? When Clint and I left?"

"Ha! Not unless you count avoiding a vicious game of football that'll stop me walkin' tomorrow missin' anything, then no."

She shuddered, "Ugh, definitely not. Poor baby – were you the goalie?"

"No! That's the thing! I was a buggin' striker; if I was the goalie, I wouldn't be complaining – how does the striker get hit _seventeen times_?"

"Maybe you're just really really bad at soccer…"

"Thank you for that vote of confidence."

"_Seventeen times?"_

"Yep."

"I rest my case."

I snorted, giving her that, as we marched past the main hall. Big, violet banners had been strung up outside it with the words: "W.I.C.K.E.D Summer Ball! 3 days to go!" in bright white cursive across them. The voice started up in my head again: _Just ask her, Newton. Just __**ask her**_. I needed a good moment. As we passed under the banners, Lily pointed to them and asked:

"You excited?"

"About the ball? I don't know – never been to one. Not sure white tie stuff's my thing. You?"

"Me neither; Karly's excited so I've got to at least pretend to be for the next four days."

"Oh yeah – Min's ecstatic, he can't believe she wanted to go with him – he acts tough, but he thought she'd say no."

Lily's eyes widened and she waved her hands in frustration: "Argh! Why?! They'd be great together – and they've been flirting since the train here! Why?!"

"Yes! If he got a girlfriend, I'm pretty sure his ego'd blow up at least three more sizes, but hey, maybe he'd stop babbling about her. But he's been going on and on about what to wear to this thing now, askin' me like _I'm_ gonna have a buggin' clue! All this 'dance' stuff's jackin' my head up, Lil."

She shifted the child in her arms into a new position and frowned, like she was considering something:

"Maybe we should just boycott it. Go sit on the roof and find another window for you to fall through."

I didn't have any arms free to push her with, so I made do with a pout. "Hey! I didn't 'fall through' the first one."

I wasn't about to admit that her plan was way more appealing than standing in a stuffy room in a suit trying to dance and shout at other over-dressed people over a pounding bass for three hours. The only time I'd ever worn a suit was for one of my Mom's award shows back in 2059 - and I was certain I'd hated it.

"Oh wow, Lil, we should go in onesies!"

A huge grin split her face at the idea, a spark lighting in her tired eyes: "I will if you will."

"Only if I get to be the unicorn."

"Aw, honey, you're already a unicorn!"

We arrived at the dorm blocks weak with laughter, assigning different animals to people on the campus as we fielded the small children into the right rooms. Way too quickly, we found ourselves walking down the corridor to Lily's dorm and the voice racked up a few notches: _Just ask her, Newton. Just __**ask her**_. In the end, she made it easy for me. Lily had just put down her rucksack to find her I.D card, when she suddenly glanced up and said:

"You were going to say something earlier, N, before Colby came in. I never asked you, sorry, what was it?"

"Oh – er – um," _**Just **__**ask her**_. "I was just wonderin' if you, er, wanted to go to that dance-thing, um, with me?"

I heard my worst London accent creeping into my voice and cringed internally. Looking down at her expression, I wanted to backtrack five minutes and _never say it._ Her expression was a painful mix of pity and surprise and her face had flushed four shades darker than five seconds ago.

"Oh, N – I –I can't." She stood up and brushed her hair back from her face, avoiding my eyes. "It's not that I don't want to – I would, I would, really – but, er, we were outside earlier, and Clint asked me. I didn't think that anyone- so, er, I said yes."

"Oh." _Of course he did_. I mirrored her movements and tossed my fringe back for something to do. _Why would she go with you?_ "Oh. That's great – er, that's fine, don't worry about it, kid."

Weirdly, Lily seemed frustrated, pulling her rucksack back on and twisting her hands around: "Oh, if only you'd – oh, never mind." She bit her lip and stared up at me. "I'm really sorry, N."

She looked so guilty about it – though it was really my fault for being such a _bloody coward_ – that I almost laughed. I shook my head and slipped an arm around her shoulders and gave her an awkward sideways hug.

"Don't worry about it, Lilbug." Grinning, I stepped away and started off down the corridor. "I mean, it's your loss – Clint could never rock a unicorn onesie, he's too alpaca." That earned me a soft laugh as I pushed open the lift. "Night! I really don't mind, Lily!"

_And it was only when I finally reached the door to my dorm, bruised, messy and exhausted, that I realised what a total lie that was. _

* * *

**Hi everyone!**

**I hope you're all having/had a great holiday! I know there wasn't a whole lot of action in that chapter, but I really liked just writing the characters and their relationships with each other - let me know what you think :) (Can we get to 100 reviews, maybe?)**

**And virtual hugs to everyone who guessed the couple from the last chapter: It was Borro and Nick, so well done :)**

**Now, I was rushing to get this chapter up because I have some really important exams coming up in this term, which is going to mean that I can't write for about 2 1/2 months, so I won't be able to get a new chapter up until those are finished, but I promise as soon as those _are_ over, you are all going to get way more frequent updates - I'll have a lot more free time! (These exams are the reason I have no life right now!) Which is great, but I'm really sorry about the delay.**

**See you soon,**

**Star* xx**

**REPLYING TO REVIEWS (If I haven't already)**

**Psychotic Demonic Angel: Thank you! I'm always really worried about OC's getting annoying or writing them badly, so that's so lovely to hear :) xx**

**The Tezzerax: Thank you! :) xx**

**Golden Tomato: Haha - that was my plan with the chapter title! I'm glad you got it :) Yes, this chapter is a bit more developed on the Newt/Lily feelings front but I'm trying to move slowly and keep it reasonably believable. And thanks, that's so nice :) xx**

**Georgie: ^ Newt/Lilly fluff above, what did you think? And yep - I definitely have a love/hate relationship with Axel too, don't worry about it. :) Thank you! xx**

**Viola: Thank you - that's really kind :) I'm trying to move slowly relationship wise - though I'm not sure Minho and Karly are planning on it! :) xx**


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